February 21, 2025 • 26 mins
Questions we answer in this episode
What is a router?
How many episodes will be in this series?
Is Makani trying to turn me into a network engineer?
What is the metaphor we will use for this series?
Episode summaryEvery internet connected device is under constant threat of attack.
Especially the router on your home network.
In order to protect your devices, you don't need to become a network engineer.
But you need to understand 3 things about computer networks:
1 - Our devices are super chatty. Think of it like them making frequent phone calls to each other.
2 - A computer network is a set of devices that can make calls to each other.
3 - Your home network router is what lets the devices at your house talk to devices far away on the internet.
Call to actionTake a moment now to locate the router in your home.
Write down the brand and model number.
You'll be using that information in a future episode in this series.
LinksMark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Okay, what is a router? I know we need it for internet access, but are we going to get technical?
How many episodes will be in this series? Trust me, as many as it takes. Makani can go on.
(00:21):
I think this might set a new record for our longest series yet.
Here we go, here we go. Is Makani trying to turn me into a network engineer? Dude,
you know I'm not a techie, like I'm definitely no guru, so we got to keep it simple.
(00:43):
What brings me hope is what is the metaphor we're going to use for this series? I like metaphors
because they keep things simple. So here we go. Welcome back and thanks for tuning in. I'm Nick
and this is Super Simple Security Principles. Listen each week and learn how to think,
(01:09):
not what to think. This is episode 51, our super chatty devices.
When I read your line for that, I got a kick out of it. You could tell what kind of mood I was in
when I wrote this episode. I love that you used part of our title for it too, our super chatty
(01:31):
devices. It is the first episode in a series on home network security. We talked about this last
week. So all right man, I'm assuming we're going to get to the why. Having a sound understanding of
some basics will help us with some simple layers of security, correct? Yeah, and we'll be talking,
(02:00):
the why will be spread out a little bit between the first two episodes. So in this episode,
the why that we'll talk about, well, there's a couple parts of the why actually in this one
and one in the next episode. The first part though is the internet is a war zone and that's not really
(02:23):
news, right? We've talked about a lot of different kinds of internet battles, but this particular
battle, the network attacks is a little bit different because it's the most invisible to
humans. The attacks aren't directed at humans. You don't, the attack isn't delivered by a text
(02:45):
or an email. It's directed directly, that sounds weird, at our devices. Okay.
And it's not about what any human is doing in the moment of the attack. It's about what the vast
amounts of always on, always connected to the internet devices are doing. That makes sense.
(03:12):
They're always connected. Yeah, they're connected. And so that means the why really kind of boils down
to every internet connected device you have is under constant threat of attack, even though
that's not necessarily obvious to you. Right. And share a quick story. My brother,
(03:36):
Kem, who we haven't talked about sometimes, he was setting up a new website recently for
a personal project unrelated to what we do. But within seconds of that brand new website being
all set up and visible, it was under attack. He hadn't even sent it out or shared it with
(03:57):
anybody and it was under attack. And this is not, I mean, this was not unexpected.
We've set up lots of websites over the years and they just, the moment they're visible,
they're available on the internet, boom, they're under attack. And the amount of attacks,
it ebbs and flows some, but it never really stops. It just pauses for a little while at best.
(04:25):
Right. Now, the good news is most devices, even though they have access to the internet,
they're not connected directly as part of the internet, aren't exposed in the same way as
a website hosting device is. And we'll get into more about that. That's part of what we're going
to be talking about, what the differences are and what kinds of attacks. But the immediate point
(04:53):
is that there is one device in your home, Nick, and all of our listeners home, most likely,
that is exposed in this exact same way. And that's your router.
Okay. So our router is our weakest link.
(05:14):
Yep.
Sounds like.
Yeah, exactly. And again, we're not trying to freak people out because we're going to give
you protections here too, right? But it's important to understand if you're actually
going to protect your home network, it's all about protecting your router because it's the
(05:36):
protection for all your other devices. And your router is literally available for attack 24-7,
365.
Like a website.
Yeah, exactly. Like a website. And everybody, I mean, all the bad guys want to get into your
router too.
Right.
(05:57):
So anyway, that kind of gives you a little bit of the why.
Okay.
So now a quick introduction of the series, and then we'll get into the content for today.
But I want to introduce kind of the objective, just a mini quick roadmap of what the series is
(06:18):
going to do. And as I mentioned, I've been mapping this out and it definitely feels like it's going to
be our longest series yet. And I don't even have a guess about the number of episodes this time
around, but I do have, yeah, well, yep. I'd be surprised if it goes past 10, but we'll see.
(06:46):
But I do have a set of objectives anyway.
And so the first basic one, and that what we'll be talking about for today's episode
is what I would characterize as the non-security fundamentals of computer networking,
specifically of a home computer network and a little bit how it's relevant to the internet.
(07:10):
We're not, again, not trying to become the network engineer, just a teeny bit so that you can
understand what we'll talk about in the rest of the episodes. Yeah. In episode two, we'll probably
talk about three types of network attacks that you want to be aware of, and that we'll then in
the following episodes talk about different layers of protection for each of those three kinds of
(07:34):
attacks. The good news is, unlike some kinds of attacks, like with the phone spying and stuff,
there's not a lot you can do there, but there are a lot of tools. There are a lot of options that we
can do to really keep ourselves safe. Okay. Good deal. That's good. And a few things to avoid.
(07:58):
Actually, in some cases, it's mostly, you don't even need to add a layer of protection. Just don't
do this thing that opens a gaping wide hole into your home network. Oh, sweet. So there's some
things like that too. So I think the next thing is answering that question, is Makani trying to
(08:21):
turn me into a network engineer. I want to dive into that just a little bit more.
Because, I mean, obviously I was in kind of a goofy mood when I wrote that, but
I've had a lot of people ask me about protect their computer, about a VPN or an antivirus or
a firewall. And they're like, sometimes they're even asking, I mean, I don't even know what it
(08:45):
does for me. Do I actually need it? What does it do for me? And I'm trying to have this quick
conversation and explain, okay, well, this is what it does for you, but it's not as easy as like,
say, you buy a tool, a physical non-digital tool, you get a hand mixer or a vacuum,
anything, you can demonstrate it. You can tinker with it. You can practice with it until you know
(09:09):
how to use it safely or not, depending on how careful of a person you are, but you can use it
anyway. And computer tools, of course, they're a little bit trickier. But the goal of this is
to kind of help explain that. So when you're picking your tools, you know, okay, I have a tool
(09:32):
that will do this, and this is how it protects me. And you can evaluate, is it actually doing its job?
You can use it effectively, these kinds of things. Yeah. Does that make sense?
Absolutely. Makes total sense. So that's the goal. I don't want to, you know, I mean, I love talking
about this stuff, but I don't want to, you know, talk about a bunch of stuff that I just,
(09:57):
because I love talking about it, you know. Right. I definitely tried to make sure that even though,
and I emphasize this with this one, because so much of it today is, well, pretty much all of it,
honestly, won't be directly about security. And so I just kind of want to preempt it. If you
start thinking, dude, why is he going on about this stuff? It's the foundation for all the rest
(10:22):
of this series. And so, you know, we'll try to keep it as short and sweet and simple, of course,
as possible. But anyway, that's the reason. So. And coming from my experience, I'll share this
with the listeners, coming from my experience. Yeah. Is Makani's not going to overwhelm you?
Not going to overwhelm you? We're going to take this in bite-sized bits, but there's also a reason
(10:47):
for all the madness, we'll say. Why is your router important? There's going to be reasons to it,
and so he does a great job at keeping it simple. I'm excited. This is going to be something,
I mean, you tell me my router's immediately exposed 24-7 like a website, and I'm going,
(11:09):
man, I got to add some layer of security right there because, you know, I've had,
you know, similar, I think we're talking about the same story about website getting
coming under attack. And so anyways. Yeah. I'm excited to see how we can
(11:35):
layer up, you know, so. Well, thank you. Thank you for that endorsement and good to hear that.
That's. Yeah, we're on the same page, so. OK, so the next thing I think is to introduce the metaphor.
OK. Now, as I titled it, you know, our chatty devices, right? Because our devices,
(12:02):
especially these days, ever more than, you know, actually, Kem and I were reviewing,
you know, how much bandwidth, how much, you know, device our devices are talking.
Yeah. And wow, it had gone up so much more even than we had expected. There's just so much going
on. Really? Yeah. So because, you know, with your Internet service provider, you have limits on how
(12:25):
much you can download. You have the speeds, right, that everybody hears about. But you also
usually have limits. Sometimes it's unlimited. But and if you go look on your router, you can
see in a month or how much you're downloading. And we both looked and compared. And I was just
I was really blown away. That was kind of the inspiration for this episode's title,
(12:46):
because I was like, wow, it has really gone up even just over over the years. So that's crazy.
OK, but so the metaphor, though, is is a phone call that it's that simple. And so each time
a device talks to another device, I want you to think about it like it's making a phone call.
(13:09):
OK. OK. And that means that so there's one device that's making the phone call
and the other device gets to decide, am I going to answer this phone call or am I going to ignore it?
Yeah. Right. If the call is answered, then they exchange information for a while and then they
(13:30):
hang up. Now, the pattern, the purpose, the frequency of those calls, of course, is nothing
like, you know, humans calling each other. Right. But the basic elements are going to be the same
making a call, answering or ignoring the call. And that's a really critical piece because you can
(13:53):
you want to ignore the bad ones. Right. Right. If possible, you know, exchanging information
and ending the calls and. You know, some devices like the ones where websites live, for example,
are designed primarily to accept calls. Right. Makes sense. They need to answer them like we've
(14:17):
talked about all the time. Other devices like your phone are primarily device designed to
make phone calls to other devices. We don't really want a lot of incoming ones, comparatively at least.
Right. And so some examples of these, just to make it very clear in people's head of
(14:41):
when this happens is, you know, say your phone, your phone might be checking for email every minute.
Your printer might check with its manufactured website every day for updates.
And when you do things, when you go and check email, when you go visit a website,
(15:01):
when you do anything behind the scenes, your device is making tons and tons of little phone
calls behind the scenes to make that happen. Right. Thanks. Yeah, I get it. I like it. Okay.
Yeah. So we'll build on that. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. It's making all these little phone calls
(15:25):
all the time. Okay. Yep. And there's different categories of phone calls and different rules
about the phone calls and things like that. But that's kind of our baseline is these phone calls.
So that's the metaphor. And then how we're going to tie that in is
going to kind of give you a simplified definition of what a computer network is
(15:51):
and what your router is. So we'll start with the network. And for our purposes, we're going to
define a network basically as a collection of devices that are allowed to make phone calls
to each other. Okay. So like this could be our laptops, our phones, our... Right. Well,
(16:14):
so if we look at your home network, that's going to be your phone, printer, any devices that are
physically at your home. They might be connected with a network cable and ethernet cable or over
Wi-Fi, right? But all the devices at your home are on a network. All the devices at my home
(16:37):
are also on a network, but a different network than your network.
That made it sink in a little bit clearer of like, oh, wait a second. Like we've got TVs,
you know? Right. And that's on your network. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. That would be another one,
assuming they're internet capable, but these days, yeah. I was going to say that's pretty
(16:59):
standard these days. Yep. Yep. Crazy. Crazy. So there's more devices that you realize.
When you said printer, I was like, holy crap. Yeah. Yeah. It is. Yeah. There's a lot of them.
And, you know, we're going to kind of simplify some of the concepts of the network and how they
(17:22):
are connected. We're really just going to worry about two kinds of network, home network. So
your home network, my home network, each listener's individual home network, but then,
and then of course the internet. Okay. And so because when, you know, again, we go back to
that definition of the network, they're allowed to make phone calls to each other, right? Right.
(17:47):
Right. So the devices on your local network, that's what it's called, is your local home network.
They can talk to each other, but what if they want to talk to a device that's far away,
somewhere on the internet? Yeah. Right. Now that's where your router comes in.
(18:09):
That's your gateway to the internet. And in some places you'll actually see in settings and things
that it's talked about as your gateway. Yeah. Okay. Because the router has a very unique role.
Unlike most devices, which are members of a single network, your router belongs to
two networks, your home network and the internet network. Right. That makes sense. Yeah.
(18:39):
Because like your internet provider network, right? Yeah. Well, so again, that's why we're
simplifying it. The layer that your internet provider is a physical network, and this is
more of the logical network. We're glossing over some of that because it doesn't matter.
So we simplify that. Yes. That is very relevant in some instances, just not really for our purposes.
(19:05):
And so we're basically treating it as the router goes from your house because it's visible
logically on the internet to people, even though the physical transmission of devices,
of signals, I mean, it does have to travel through your internet service provider.
(19:26):
But that's just mostly not relevant for our purposes, basically. Okay. We're just keeping
it super simple. Yeah. And so that's why from our perspective, basically your router exists
and is visible on the internet and on your home network. And so it can be the bridge
(19:48):
because it's allowed to make and talk to devices on the internet.
And all the devices on your local network can talk to your router. And so it's the thing that
lets them talk to devices on the internet because they're not allowed to directly. They need the
help of a device on the internet. Makes sense. And so there's a difference between being on the
(20:13):
internet as we're talking about it here, being actually part of the internet network, being
visible there and being connected to it as we normally think about it. Because it just all
happens behind the scenes. Your phone can talk to websites obviously very easily, but it's only
able to do that because it got connected to your local Wi-Fi and then went out through the router.
(20:37):
Went through the router. Yep. Yep. Okay. So looks like you're with me so far, right? Yep. Yep. With
you so far. We kept that pretty simple. You were keeping it more simple than even I was thinking so.
Perfect. Good. Well, and so then I think one of the main other details that's
(21:01):
interesting or important to realize too is, so not only when you're going outbound, so like when
your phone wants to talk to the website, right? Let's say the website wanted to talk to your phone
or whatever, any device on the internet wants to talk to your phone.
(21:21):
Well, if it wants to do that, it's going to have to get permission of your router. It's going to
have to go through your router just like the other direction. It can't just directly talk to your
phone like it can the router. It can hit up the router and say, I want to talk to somebody or
whatever, if it knows about your phone, but the router has to give permission essentially.
(21:42):
Okay, cool. And so that's why it becomes the key piece of when we're talking about home network
security is understanding the router's role and making sure that it's configured properly to
provide the protection you want. Right, right. Makes sense. And so in terms of the phone calls,
what that basically boils down to is its job is to say, determine which calls it's going to accept
(22:09):
and which ones it's going to reject. Right. And the router actually behind the scenes,
we'll talk about this more in a future one, but there's different pieces of it. And
I'm sure you've heard a very common word, especially in movies and stuff is firewall,
right? Yeah. And the firewall is actually the specific piece that really is the primary
(22:32):
thing that does the job of that call rejection logic. So we'll get into that more, but just to
kind of tie that in a little bit to something that you've heard about, get past the firewalls
always in the movies, three firewalls or whatever they're talking about always makes me laugh.
(22:53):
But anyway, so I think, yeah, I'm just looking at my notes. I think that answers everything
that we need to for today. Any questions that came up? No, no, we got the router. We got the
(23:18):
metaphors with all the calls that they're making. Like I think we've kind of reached that point in
time. Okay. I think we've hit our call to action. Don't you? Yeah, I'm ready. All right. Okay. Let's
hear it. What's our call to action? So there's going to be a kind of a preparation one. I want
(23:40):
you to locate the router in your home and then write down the brand and look around on there
and find a model number too. Okay. And that's it just for now, just gather that because we're
going to need that later on in the series so we can figure out some things about your router.
But for now, just find out where it's physically located, the brand and model number and write
(24:03):
those down so you have it ready when we need it later. Okay. Okay. I can do that. Find it,
brand, model number, write it down, have it ready. Yep. And on model number, you know, there's a lot
of times, like a lot of different things, you know, numbers on there. We don't care about the serial
(24:23):
number, for example, that identifies that specific device, just, but the model number, it's, it just
tells you it, what kind of category of thing it is so we can find it's what you need. So you can find
like the manual for it and that sort of thing. Gotcha. Gotcha. So anyway. Okay. So I'll pass it back
(24:46):
to you to introduce the next episode. Awesome. Yeah. Next episode is going to be number two in
this series, series, excuse me. We're learning about three kinds of network attacks we want to
protect our home network against. So look, nobody wants to be a victim of a network attack. So this
(25:08):
episode, this upcoming episode is going to be awesome. I'm excited to see what we can do to
thwart against these attacks. So let's go. Yeah. Well, and, and like, that'll be kind of a big why
to, to finish up the rest of the why's that'll kind of bring us through the rest of the episode
or rest of the series. So rest of the series. Yeah. Awesome. It's going to be good. Okay. I love it.
(25:36):
I love it.
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(26:01):
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Again, that's bulletproofmyid.com.
Okay, what is a router? I know we need it for internet access, but are we going to get technical?
How many episodes will be in this series? Trust me, as many as it takes. Makani can go on.
(00:21):
I think this might set a new record for our longest series yet.
Here we go, here we go. Is Makani trying to turn me into a network engineer? Dude,
you know I'm not a techie, like I'm definitely no guru, so we got to keep it simple.
(00:43):
What brings me hope is what is the metaphor we're going to use for this series? I like metaphors
because they keep things simple. So here we go. Welcome back and thanks for tuning in. I'm Nick
and this is Super Simple Security Principles. Listen each week and learn how to think,
(01:09):
not what to think. This is episode 51, our super chatty devices.
When I read your line for that, I got a kick out of it. You could tell what kind of mood I was in
when I wrote this episode. I love that you used part of our title for it too, our super chatty
(01:31):
devices. It is the first episode in a series on home network security. We talked about this last
week. So all right man, I'm assuming we're going to get to the why. Having a sound understanding of
some basics will help us with some simple layers of security, correct? Yeah, and we'll be talking,
(02:00):
the why will be spread out a little bit between the first two episodes. So in this episode,
the why that we'll talk about, well, there's a couple parts of the why actually in this one
and one in the next episode. The first part though is the internet is a war zone and that's not really
(02:23):
news, right? We've talked about a lot of different kinds of internet battles, but this particular
battle, the network attacks is a little bit different because it's the most invisible to
humans. The attacks aren't directed at humans. You don't, the attack isn't delivered by a text
(02:45):
or an email. It's directed directly, that sounds weird, at our devices. Okay.
And it's not about what any human is doing in the moment of the attack. It's about what the vast
amounts of always on, always connected to the internet devices are doing. That makes sense.
(03:12):
They're always connected. Yeah, they're connected. And so that means the why really kind of boils down
to every internet connected device you have is under constant threat of attack, even though
that's not necessarily obvious to you. Right. And share a quick story. My brother,
(03:36):
Kem, who we haven't talked about sometimes, he was setting up a new website recently for
a personal project unrelated to what we do. But within seconds of that brand new website being
all set up and visible, it was under attack. He hadn't even sent it out or shared it with
(03:57):
anybody and it was under attack. And this is not, I mean, this was not unexpected.
We've set up lots of websites over the years and they just, the moment they're visible,
they're available on the internet, boom, they're under attack. And the amount of attacks,
it ebbs and flows some, but it never really stops. It just pauses for a little while at best.
(04:25):
Right. Now, the good news is most devices, even though they have access to the internet,
they're not connected directly as part of the internet, aren't exposed in the same way as
a website hosting device is. And we'll get into more about that. That's part of what we're going
to be talking about, what the differences are and what kinds of attacks. But the immediate point
(04:53):
is that there is one device in your home, Nick, and all of our listeners home, most likely,
that is exposed in this exact same way. And that's your router.
Okay. So our router is our weakest link.
(05:14):
Yep.
Sounds like.
Yeah, exactly. And again, we're not trying to freak people out because we're going to give
you protections here too, right? But it's important to understand if you're actually
going to protect your home network, it's all about protecting your router because it's the
(05:36):
protection for all your other devices. And your router is literally available for attack 24-7,
365.
Like a website.
Yeah, exactly. Like a website. And everybody, I mean, all the bad guys want to get into your
router too.
Right.
(05:57):
So anyway, that kind of gives you a little bit of the why.
Okay.
So now a quick introduction of the series, and then we'll get into the content for today.
But I want to introduce kind of the objective, just a mini quick roadmap of what the series is
(06:18):
going to do. And as I mentioned, I've been mapping this out and it definitely feels like it's going to
be our longest series yet. And I don't even have a guess about the number of episodes this time
around, but I do have, yeah, well, yep. I'd be surprised if it goes past 10, but we'll see.
(06:46):
But I do have a set of objectives anyway.
And so the first basic one, and that what we'll be talking about for today's episode
is what I would characterize as the non-security fundamentals of computer networking,
specifically of a home computer network and a little bit how it's relevant to the internet.
(07:10):
We're not, again, not trying to become the network engineer, just a teeny bit so that you can
understand what we'll talk about in the rest of the episodes. Yeah. In episode two, we'll probably
talk about three types of network attacks that you want to be aware of, and that we'll then in
the following episodes talk about different layers of protection for each of those three kinds of
(07:34):
attacks. The good news is, unlike some kinds of attacks, like with the phone spying and stuff,
there's not a lot you can do there, but there are a lot of tools. There are a lot of options that we
can do to really keep ourselves safe. Okay. Good deal. That's good. And a few things to avoid.
(07:58):
Actually, in some cases, it's mostly, you don't even need to add a layer of protection. Just don't
do this thing that opens a gaping wide hole into your home network. Oh, sweet. So there's some
things like that too. So I think the next thing is answering that question, is Makani trying to
(08:21):
turn me into a network engineer. I want to dive into that just a little bit more.
Because, I mean, obviously I was in kind of a goofy mood when I wrote that, but
I've had a lot of people ask me about protect their computer, about a VPN or an antivirus or
a firewall. And they're like, sometimes they're even asking, I mean, I don't even know what it
(08:45):
does for me. Do I actually need it? What does it do for me? And I'm trying to have this quick
conversation and explain, okay, well, this is what it does for you, but it's not as easy as like,
say, you buy a tool, a physical non-digital tool, you get a hand mixer or a vacuum,
anything, you can demonstrate it. You can tinker with it. You can practice with it until you know
(09:09):
how to use it safely or not, depending on how careful of a person you are, but you can use it
anyway. And computer tools, of course, they're a little bit trickier. But the goal of this is
to kind of help explain that. So when you're picking your tools, you know, okay, I have a tool
(09:32):
that will do this, and this is how it protects me. And you can evaluate, is it actually doing its job?
You can use it effectively, these kinds of things. Yeah. Does that make sense?
Absolutely. Makes total sense. So that's the goal. I don't want to, you know, I mean, I love talking
about this stuff, but I don't want to, you know, talk about a bunch of stuff that I just,
(09:57):
because I love talking about it, you know. Right. I definitely tried to make sure that even though,
and I emphasize this with this one, because so much of it today is, well, pretty much all of it,
honestly, won't be directly about security. And so I just kind of want to preempt it. If you
start thinking, dude, why is he going on about this stuff? It's the foundation for all the rest
(10:22):
of this series. And so, you know, we'll try to keep it as short and sweet and simple, of course,
as possible. But anyway, that's the reason. So. And coming from my experience, I'll share this
with the listeners, coming from my experience. Yeah. Is Makani's not going to overwhelm you?
Not going to overwhelm you? We're going to take this in bite-sized bits, but there's also a reason
(10:47):
for all the madness, we'll say. Why is your router important? There's going to be reasons to it,
and so he does a great job at keeping it simple. I'm excited. This is going to be something,
I mean, you tell me my router's immediately exposed 24-7 like a website, and I'm going,
(11:09):
man, I got to add some layer of security right there because, you know, I've had,
you know, similar, I think we're talking about the same story about website getting
coming under attack. And so anyways. Yeah. I'm excited to see how we can
(11:35):
layer up, you know, so. Well, thank you. Thank you for that endorsement and good to hear that.
That's. Yeah, we're on the same page, so. OK, so the next thing I think is to introduce the metaphor.
OK. Now, as I titled it, you know, our chatty devices, right? Because our devices,
(12:02):
especially these days, ever more than, you know, actually, Kem and I were reviewing,
you know, how much bandwidth, how much, you know, device our devices are talking.
Yeah. And wow, it had gone up so much more even than we had expected. There's just so much going
on. Really? Yeah. So because, you know, with your Internet service provider, you have limits on how
(12:25):
much you can download. You have the speeds, right, that everybody hears about. But you also
usually have limits. Sometimes it's unlimited. But and if you go look on your router, you can
see in a month or how much you're downloading. And we both looked and compared. And I was just
I was really blown away. That was kind of the inspiration for this episode's title,
(12:46):
because I was like, wow, it has really gone up even just over over the years. So that's crazy.
OK, but so the metaphor, though, is is a phone call that it's that simple. And so each time
a device talks to another device, I want you to think about it like it's making a phone call.
(13:09):
OK. OK. And that means that so there's one device that's making the phone call
and the other device gets to decide, am I going to answer this phone call or am I going to ignore it?
Yeah. Right. If the call is answered, then they exchange information for a while and then they
(13:30):
hang up. Now, the pattern, the purpose, the frequency of those calls, of course, is nothing
like, you know, humans calling each other. Right. But the basic elements are going to be the same
making a call, answering or ignoring the call. And that's a really critical piece because you can
(13:53):
you want to ignore the bad ones. Right. Right. If possible, you know, exchanging information
and ending the calls and. You know, some devices like the ones where websites live, for example,
are designed primarily to accept calls. Right. Makes sense. They need to answer them like we've
(14:17):
talked about all the time. Other devices like your phone are primarily device designed to
make phone calls to other devices. We don't really want a lot of incoming ones, comparatively at least.
Right. And so some examples of these, just to make it very clear in people's head of
(14:41):
when this happens is, you know, say your phone, your phone might be checking for email every minute.
Your printer might check with its manufactured website every day for updates.
And when you do things, when you go and check email, when you go visit a website,
(15:01):
when you do anything behind the scenes, your device is making tons and tons of little phone
calls behind the scenes to make that happen. Right. Thanks. Yeah, I get it. I like it. Okay.
Yeah. So we'll build on that. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. It's making all these little phone calls
(15:25):
all the time. Okay. Yep. And there's different categories of phone calls and different rules
about the phone calls and things like that. But that's kind of our baseline is these phone calls.
So that's the metaphor. And then how we're going to tie that in is
going to kind of give you a simplified definition of what a computer network is
(15:51):
and what your router is. So we'll start with the network. And for our purposes, we're going to
define a network basically as a collection of devices that are allowed to make phone calls
to each other. Okay. So like this could be our laptops, our phones, our... Right. Well,
(16:14):
so if we look at your home network, that's going to be your phone, printer, any devices that are
physically at your home. They might be connected with a network cable and ethernet cable or over
Wi-Fi, right? But all the devices at your home are on a network. All the devices at my home
(16:37):
are also on a network, but a different network than your network.
That made it sink in a little bit clearer of like, oh, wait a second. Like we've got TVs,
you know? Right. And that's on your network. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. That would be another one,
assuming they're internet capable, but these days, yeah. I was going to say that's pretty
(16:59):
standard these days. Yep. Yep. Crazy. Crazy. So there's more devices that you realize.
When you said printer, I was like, holy crap. Yeah. Yeah. It is. Yeah. There's a lot of them.
And, you know, we're going to kind of simplify some of the concepts of the network and how they
(17:22):
are connected. We're really just going to worry about two kinds of network, home network. So
your home network, my home network, each listener's individual home network, but then,
and then of course the internet. Okay. And so because when, you know, again, we go back to
that definition of the network, they're allowed to make phone calls to each other, right? Right.
(17:47):
Right. So the devices on your local network, that's what it's called, is your local home network.
They can talk to each other, but what if they want to talk to a device that's far away,
somewhere on the internet? Yeah. Right. Now that's where your router comes in.
(18:09):
That's your gateway to the internet. And in some places you'll actually see in settings and things
that it's talked about as your gateway. Yeah. Okay. Because the router has a very unique role.
Unlike most devices, which are members of a single network, your router belongs to
two networks, your home network and the internet network. Right. That makes sense. Yeah.
(18:39):
Because like your internet provider network, right? Yeah. Well, so again, that's why we're
simplifying it. The layer that your internet provider is a physical network, and this is
more of the logical network. We're glossing over some of that because it doesn't matter.
So we simplify that. Yes. That is very relevant in some instances, just not really for our purposes.
(19:05):
And so we're basically treating it as the router goes from your house because it's visible
logically on the internet to people, even though the physical transmission of devices,
of signals, I mean, it does have to travel through your internet service provider.
(19:26):
But that's just mostly not relevant for our purposes, basically. Okay. We're just keeping
it super simple. Yeah. And so that's why from our perspective, basically your router exists
and is visible on the internet and on your home network. And so it can be the bridge
(19:48):
because it's allowed to make and talk to devices on the internet.
And all the devices on your local network can talk to your router. And so it's the thing that
lets them talk to devices on the internet because they're not allowed to directly. They need the
help of a device on the internet. Makes sense. And so there's a difference between being on the
(20:13):
internet as we're talking about it here, being actually part of the internet network, being
visible there and being connected to it as we normally think about it. Because it just all
happens behind the scenes. Your phone can talk to websites obviously very easily, but it's only
able to do that because it got connected to your local Wi-Fi and then went out through the router.
(20:37):
Went through the router. Yep. Yep. Okay. So looks like you're with me so far, right? Yep. Yep. With
you so far. We kept that pretty simple. You were keeping it more simple than even I was thinking so.
Perfect. Good. Well, and so then I think one of the main other details that's
(21:01):
interesting or important to realize too is, so not only when you're going outbound, so like when
your phone wants to talk to the website, right? Let's say the website wanted to talk to your phone
or whatever, any device on the internet wants to talk to your phone.
(21:21):
Well, if it wants to do that, it's going to have to get permission of your router. It's going to
have to go through your router just like the other direction. It can't just directly talk to your
phone like it can the router. It can hit up the router and say, I want to talk to somebody or
whatever, if it knows about your phone, but the router has to give permission essentially.
(21:42):
Okay, cool. And so that's why it becomes the key piece of when we're talking about home network
security is understanding the router's role and making sure that it's configured properly to
provide the protection you want. Right, right. Makes sense. And so in terms of the phone calls,
what that basically boils down to is its job is to say, determine which calls it's going to accept
(22:09):
and which ones it's going to reject. Right. And the router actually behind the scenes,
we'll talk about this more in a future one, but there's different pieces of it. And
I'm sure you've heard a very common word, especially in movies and stuff is firewall,
right? Yeah. And the firewall is actually the specific piece that really is the primary
(22:32):
thing that does the job of that call rejection logic. So we'll get into that more, but just to
kind of tie that in a little bit to something that you've heard about, get past the firewalls
always in the movies, three firewalls or whatever they're talking about always makes me laugh.
(22:53):
But anyway, so I think, yeah, I'm just looking at my notes. I think that answers everything
that we need to for today. Any questions that came up? No, no, we got the router. We got the
(23:18):
metaphors with all the calls that they're making. Like I think we've kind of reached that point in
time. Okay. I think we've hit our call to action. Don't you? Yeah, I'm ready. All right. Okay. Let's
hear it. What's our call to action? So there's going to be a kind of a preparation one. I want
(23:40):
you to locate the router in your home and then write down the brand and look around on there
and find a model number too. Okay. And that's it just for now, just gather that because we're
going to need that later on in the series so we can figure out some things about your router.
But for now, just find out where it's physically located, the brand and model number and write
(24:03):
those down so you have it ready when we need it later. Okay. Okay. I can do that. Find it,
brand, model number, write it down, have it ready. Yep. And on model number, you know, there's a lot
of times, like a lot of different things, you know, numbers on there. We don't care about the serial
(24:23):
number, for example, that identifies that specific device, just, but the model number, it's, it just
tells you it, what kind of category of thing it is so we can find it's what you need. So you can find
like the manual for it and that sort of thing. Gotcha. Gotcha. So anyway. Okay. So I'll pass it back
(24:46):
to you to introduce the next episode. Awesome. Yeah. Next episode is going to be number two in
this series, series, excuse me. We're learning about three kinds of network attacks we want to
protect our home network against. So look, nobody wants to be a victim of a network attack. So this
(25:08):
episode, this upcoming episode is going to be awesome. I'm excited to see what we can do to
thwart against these attacks. So let's go. Yeah. Well, and, and like, that'll be kind of a big why
to, to finish up the rest of the why's that'll kind of bring us through the rest of the episode
or rest of the series. So rest of the series. Yeah. Awesome. It's going to be good. Okay. I love it.
(25:36):
I love it.
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Again, that's bulletproofmyid.com.
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