Speaker 1: You know, we use this digital world every single day,
Speaker 1: streaming movies, sending instant messages, even just finding our way
Speaker 1: with a quick search on our phones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's completely woven into our lives.
Speaker 1: But how often do we actually stop and think about
Speaker 1: the intricate architecture underneath it, all the stuff you don't see.
Speaker 2: Not often enough, probably.
Speaker 1: So today we're doing a deep dive into exactly the
Speaker 1: fascinating foundations of computer networks. They're really the backbone of
Speaker 1: our digital lives, right, and.
Speaker 2: Our mission here really is to unpack the core ideas
Speaker 2: that power everything you do online. We want you to
Speaker 2: get not just what makes networks tick, but why they
Speaker 2: were built that way and some of.
Speaker 1: The ingenious solutions engineers came up with for well some
Speaker 1: pretty surprising problems.
Speaker 2: Exactly. We're digging into the key insights, basically giving you
Speaker 2: a shortcut to being genuinely well informed on this.
Speaker 1: And our guide for this is a really foundational book,
Speaker 1: Computer Networks Global Edition by Andrew Tannenbaum and Nick Fiemester.
Speaker 1: So get ready for some surprise facts, maybe a few
Speaker 1: aha moments along the way. Okay, let's start by looking
Speaker 1: back a bit. This idea of computers being networked. That
Speaker 1: wasn't always the case, was it. Early computers were just
Speaker 1: these huge isolated machines.
Speaker 2: Oh. Absolutely. For the first couple of decades, computer systems
Speaker 2: were like highly centralized, usually stuck in a single room
Speaker 2: up and behind glass windows. You know, visitors would just
Speaker 2: sort of gawk at the great electronic wonder inside. The
Speaker 2: idea that you could have vastly more powerful computers smaller
Speaker 2: than a postage stamp pure science fiction back then.
Speaker 1: That changed pretty fast, though. What was the main driver?
Speaker 1: What pushed us from those isolated giants towards you know,
Speaker 1: global conversations, especially the personal media stuff.
Speaker 2: Well, it really boiled down to person to person communication
Speaker 2: That became the big thing for the twenty first century,
Speaker 2: kind of like the telephone was for the nineteenth Ah,
Speaker 2: think about email. It just exploded, right and pretty quickly
Speaker 2: it started pulling in audio and video too. Then you
Speaker 2: had instant messaging. Its roots actually go way back to
Speaker 2: a nineteen seventies Unix program.
Speaker 1: Called talk Wow the seventies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, allowing real time text chat. And then came things
Speaker 2: like Twitter, you know, multi person services for short messages,
Speaker 2: even video to your friends or well, the entire world.
Speaker 1: And with everyone adopting this, totally new uses popped up,
Speaker 1: didn't they. Mobile phones becoming central to.
Speaker 2: Commerce, exactly, using texts to pay for stuff snacks from
Speaker 2: a vending machine, movie tickets and the charge just shows
Speaker 2: up on your phone.
Speaker 1: Bill or NFC nearfield communication, just tapping your phone to
Speaker 1: pay right.
Speaker 2: Acting like an RFID smart card. And it was good
Speaker 2: for both sides. Stores saved on credit card fees.
Speaker 1: And customers got convenience but also power right like price
Speaker 1: checking competitors right there in the.
Speaker 2: Store precisely, or seeing where else you could buy that
Speaker 2: item nearby, maybe cheaper. That kind of instant information access
Speaker 2: changed things.
Speaker 1: And the uses for mobile and wireless just keep expanding,
Speaker 1: sometimes in ways nobody really predicted. Yeah, like sensor networks
Speaker 1: in cars, Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: That's a fascinating area. Cars gathering data on location, speed, vibration,
Speaker 2: how much fuel you're using, uploading it all.
Speaker 1: So what do they do with that data?
Speaker 2: Well, it can help map out potholes across a whole city,
Speaker 2: plan roots to avoid traffic jams based on real time conditions,
Speaker 2: or even get this, tell you if you're a gas
Speaker 2: guzzler compared to other people driving the same road.
Speaker 1: Huh, that's quite specific. It's a whole new level of
Speaker 1: data insight. Really, it really is so okay, with all
Speaker 1: this complexity, this massive growth, how on earth do engineers
Speaker 1: even start designing and managing these huge networks. You can't
Speaker 1: just lump it all together, surely.
Speaker 2: No, you definitely can't. And the elegant solution they came
Speaker 2: up with is called layering. It's fundamental layering, Yeah, to
Speaker 2: make the design manageable. Most networks are organized as a
Speaker 2: stack of layers or levels. Each one is built on
Speaker 2: top of the one below it, and the key idea,
Speaker 2: the genius of it, is that each layer offers specific
Speaker 2: services to the layer above it, while hiding all the
Speaker 2: messy details of how it actually provides those services.
Speaker 1: So each layer doesn't need to know the inner workings
Speaker 1: of the others exactly.
Speaker 2: It's like each layer is a kind of virtual machine
Speaker 2: just serving the layer directly above it.
Speaker 1: So it's sort of like sending a package overseas. Is
Speaker 1: that a fair analogy?
Speaker 2: That's a great analogy. Yeah, think about it. One layer,
Speaker 2: maybe the application prepares the contents. Another layer, like transport,
Speaker 2: packages it up securely, puts the address on. Then maybe
Speaker 2: a network layer handles the customs forms, the cross border stuff, gotcha.
Speaker 2: And finally, the physical layer is what actually moves the
Speaker 2: box across the ocean or through the air. Each step
Speaker 2: has its own rules, its own job, and it doesn't
Speaker 2: need to know the nitty gritty of the other steps.
Speaker 1: And below that lowest layer, that's the actual wires.
Speaker 2: Or airwaves precisely, that's the physical medium where the actual
Speaker 2: communication happens, the real transmission of signals.
Speaker 1: So how does this connect to the internet we use?
Speaker 2: This layering concept leads us straight to the TCPIP reference model.
Speaker 2: That's the actual architecture running the global network you're using
Speaker 2: right now. Okay, TCPIP, I've heard that its ancestor really
Speaker 2: was the Arpinent, a research network funded by the US
Speaker 2: Department of Defense, and it was designed right from the
Speaker 2: start to seamlessly connect multiple different networks together.
Speaker 1: Like connecting networks was the goal. Now here's something that
Speaker 1: surprised me from the book. Why TCPIP became the standard.
Speaker 1: It wasn't necessarily because it was the best theoretical model.
Speaker 1: There was another one OSI.
Speaker 2: That's a fascinating piece of history, isn't it. Yeah, the
Speaker 2: OSI model was a major contender, very thoroughly designed. But
Speaker 2: the book points out that one of the first implementations
Speaker 2: of TCPIP was part of Berkeley Unity X that was
Speaker 2: quite good and free, not to mention free, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: That practical reality was huge. People started using it, improving it, building.
Speaker 1: On it, so it wasn't just theory, it was availability
Speaker 1: and usability pretty much.
Speaker 2: Early OSI implementations, the book notes, were off, huge, unwieldy,
Speaker 2: and slow, so people started associating OSI with poor quality.
Speaker 2: Fairly or unfairly. TCPIP just worked and its spread, so that.
Speaker 1: Layered approach, specifically tcpip's implementation. That's why my phone can
Speaker 1: talk to a server halfway across the world without breaking
Speaker 1: a sweat.
Speaker 2: That's the magic. Yes, your apps don't need to know
Speaker 2: about the fiber optic cables or the satellite links or
Speaker 2: the Wi Fi signals involved. The layers handle all that
Speaker 2: complexity underneath.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we've got this layered system. But let's go
Speaker 1: right down to the bottom that physical layer. How does
Speaker 1: the actual data the ones and next, how do they
Speaker 1: literally get from one device to another?
Speaker 2: Right? Good question. Down at the physical layer, you're dealing
Speaker 2: with the actual transmission media, and there's a real diversity there,
Speaker 2: each with its own characteristics and challenges.
Speaker 1: Like the wires the cables we actually see.
Speaker 2: Sometimes exactly for wired connections, you've got twisted pair cabling.
Speaker 2: Think of your standard Ethernet cable plugging into your computer
Speaker 2: or router. It's super common, widely used because it's cheap
Speaker 2: and the performance is adequate for shorter runs within a
Speaker 2: building or home hundreds of megabits per second easily.
Speaker 1: Then there's the cable that brings TV or Internet into
Speaker 1: the house.
Speaker 2: Yeah, coaxial coaxial pable. Yeah, it's got that solid core
Speaker 2: wire insulation than a braided shield. That structure gives it
Speaker 2: a good combination of high bandwidth and excellent noise immunity.
Speaker 2: It resists interference.
Speaker 1: Well, so it's tougher than twisted pair generally.
Speaker 2: Yes, it used to be used for long distance phone lines,
Speaker 2: but fiber optics mostly took over that role. Still, it's
Speaker 2: very common for cable TV and bringing Internet into homes
Speaker 2: metropolitan area networks.
Speaker 1: And then the really high speed stuff relies on fiber optics, right,
Speaker 1: sending light down glass threads.
Speaker 2: That's the one using light pulses through these ultra thin
Speaker 2: fibers of glass. It works because of a principle called
Speaker 2: total internal reflection, which basically traps the light inside the fiber,
Speaker 2: letting it travel long distances. And the potential bandwidth is
Speaker 2: just mind blowing. The book mentions figures in excess of
Speaker 2: fifty thousand gbps. That's fifty terabits per second.
Speaker 1: Fifty terabits.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we're apparently nowhere near reaching these limits. The
Speaker 2: current practical limits maybe around one hundred gbps per fiber,
Speaker 2: are more about how fast we can convert electricity to
Speaker 2: light and back again.
Speaker 1: Incredible. Okay, so that's wires and light. What about wireless
Speaker 1: through the air? Right?
Speaker 2: Wireless connections, You've got radio waves and different frequency bands
Speaker 2: behave differently lower frequencies vlf, LFMF. They pass through buildings easily,
Speaker 2: which is why your radio works indoors.
Speaker 1: But they don't carry much data, right.
Speaker 2: Exactly, low bandwidth for data transmission. Higher frequencies carry more
Speaker 2: data but might struggle with obstacles.
Speaker 1: And the main one we all use daily is Wi
Speaker 1: Fi eighth two point eleven.
Speaker 2: That's the dominant standard for wireless local networks. Yes, and
Speaker 2: it uses a system called csmcka carrier sense multiple access
Speaker 2: with collision avoidance, trying to prevent device is transmitting at
Speaker 2: the same time and causing.
Speaker 1: Collisions trying to avoid them.
Speaker 2: Does it always work well?
Speaker 1: That leads to a really interesting kind of counterintuitive issue,
Speaker 1: the hidden terminal problem.
Speaker 2: In terminal, okay, what's that match you.
Speaker 1: You have three laptops A, B, and C. Laptop A
Speaker 1: and laptop C are too far apart. They can't hear
Speaker 1: each other's radio signals.
Speaker 2: Okay at a range, but laptop B is in the
Speaker 2: metal within range of both A and C. Now suppose
Speaker 2: A wants to send data to B. It listens, here's nothing,
Speaker 2: and starts transmitting. Makes sense, But C also wants to
Speaker 2: send to B. C listens, doesn't hear A because A
Speaker 2: is hidden from it, thinks the coast is clear, and
Speaker 2: also starts transmitting to B.
Speaker 1: Uh. Oh, so B gets signals from both A and
Speaker 1: C at the same.
Speaker 2: Time exactly, A collision happens at B and probably neither
Speaker 2: transmission gets through. Queenly, A and C didn't know about
Speaker 2: each other, but they interfered with each other at the receiver.
Speaker 1: Huh. That is tricky. So how do they fix that?
Speaker 1: You can't just hope it doesn't happen, right.
Speaker 2: Wi Fi has an optional mechanism called RTSC tests request
Speaker 2: to send clear descent RTSCTS. Okay, so laptop A, before
Speaker 2: sending its big chunk of data to B, first sends
Speaker 2: a very short RTS frame to B requesting to send
Speaker 2: got it. If B here's that and is ready, it
Speaker 2: broadcasts back a short CTS frame clear descent. Now here's
Speaker 2: the clever part. Laptop C can hear B. So when
Speaker 2: B sends a CTS, oh see, here's the clear descend
Speaker 2: meant for A, and knows someone is about to transmit
Speaker 2: to B, even if it couldn't hear the original request
Speaker 2: from A. Precisely, the CTS acts like a do not
Speaker 2: disturb sign for anyone within d's range. C virtually senses
Speaker 2: the channel is busy and holds off its transmission, avoiding
Speaker 2: the collision.
Speaker 1: That's really clever, using the central node B to signal
Speaker 1: everyone else. It's amazing that different techniques needed just for
Speaker 1: the physical layer, isn't it wires, light, radio waves avoiding
Speaker 1: hidden collisions.
Speaker 2: It's a whole world of specialized engineering just to get
Speaker 2: those bits reliably from one point to another.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we've got bits moving physically. But we mentioned
Speaker 1: packets earlier. How does a packet of data send from
Speaker 1: my phone navigate the entire Internet, potentially crossing dozens of
Speaker 1: networks to find one specific server somewhere else. That seems
Speaker 1: like a huge challenge.
Speaker 2: It is, and that's where the Internet Protocol or IP,
Speaker 2: really comes into its own.
Speaker 1: Yeah, p addresses, right.
Speaker 2: IP addresses are part of it. Yes, IP provides the
Speaker 2: fundamental addressing and routing mechanism. It offers a best effort
Speaker 2: and that's a key term, best effort way to transport
Speaker 2: packets from source to destination.
Speaker 1: Best effort meaning it tries, but no promises pretty much. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It doesn't guarantee delivery or order or protect against errors.
Speaker 2: Its main job is to get the packet towards the
Speaker 2: destination hop by hop across different networks, without needing to
Speaker 2: know the specifics of those networks. It's the universal translator
Speaker 2: in a way.
Speaker 1: We mostly use IPv four addresses, those familiar numbers.
Speaker 2: Correct the thirty two bit addresses, but as you probably know,
Speaker 2: we've basically run out of them. It's like running out
Speaker 2: of phone numbers for the planet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've heard about that. So this polution is IPv six.
Speaker 2: IPv six, Yes, with its massive one hundred and twenty
Speaker 2: eight bit addresses, the address space is practically infinite for
Speaker 2: the foreseeable future. It's actually been an official Internet standard
Speaker 2: since nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 1: Nineteen ninety eight, but we're still mostly on IPv four.
Speaker 2: Yeah, adoption has been slower than expected. The book says
Speaker 2: itv six is deployed and used in only about twenty
Speaker 2: five percent of the Internet. Even now. Inertia is a
Speaker 2: powerful thing, and.
Speaker 1: That scarcity of the old IPv four addresses, it's actually
Speaker 1: created like a market for them. Oh.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, get this. The book mentions each IPv four address
Speaker 2: is now worth as much as nineteen dollars.
Speaker 1: Nineteen dollars for a single IP address yep.
Speaker 2: And it even cites a case in twenty nineteen where
Speaker 2: a man was convicted for illegally stockpiling seven hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty thousand IP addresses, worth about fourteen million dollars at
Speaker 2: the time, and selling them on the black market.
Speaker 1: Wow, that really shows the tangible value of these abstract
Speaker 1: numbers that run the Internet.
Speaker 2: It definitely does.
Speaker 1: But back to best effort. If IP doesn't guarantee delivery.
Speaker 1: How do we handle things where reliability is crucial, like
Speaker 1: checking my bank balance or a video call where I
Speaker 1: need things in order. Lost packets would be bad, right.
Speaker 2: You need something on top of IP to provide that reliability.
Speaker 2: And that's what the Transmission control Protocol or TCP comes in.
Speaker 1: TCP, okay, works with IP.
Speaker 2: Exactly, TCPIP they work as a pair. TCP is connection oriented.
Speaker 2: Think of it like making a phone call house. You
Speaker 2: first establish a connection like dialing and the other person
Speaker 2: picking up. Then you exchange your data over that established connection.
Speaker 2: Then you explicitly release the connection hanging up.
Speaker 1: Okay, So there's a setup and tear down.
Speaker 2: Yes, And during that connection, TCP works hard to create
Speaker 2: a reliable ordered byte stream. If IP drops a packet,
Speaker 2: PCP notices and retransmits it. If packets arrive out of order,
Speaker 2: TCP puts them back in the right sequence before handing
Speaker 2: them up to the application.
Speaker 1: So it fixes the best effort problems of IP.
Speaker 2: It does. It also handles flow control, making sure a
Speaker 2: fact sender doesn't overwhelm a slow receiver, and congestion control
Speaker 2: trying to prevent the network itself from getting overloaded.
Speaker 1: It's quite sophisticated, but not everything uses TCP. Right, There's
Speaker 1: another one, UDP, correct.
Speaker 2: User Data Ground Protocol or UDP. It's the lightweight alternative.
Speaker 2: It's connectionless, no setup or tear down needed, so it
Speaker 2: just sends pretty much. UDP does almost nothing beyond sending
Speaker 2: packets between applications. As the book puts it, it relies
Speaker 2: on ip's best effort delivery and doesn't add reliability, ordering
Speaker 2: or flow control itself.
Speaker 1: Why would you want that? Less reliable sounds.
Speaker 2: Bad because it's faster, no connection set up overhead, no
Speaker 2: waiting for acknowledgments or retransmissions. For things like say online
Speaker 2: gaming or streaming live video or audio, speed is often
Speaker 2: more critical than perfect reliability.
Speaker 1: Ah okay, If a single frame of video drops in
Speaker 1: a stream, it's maybe a slight glitch, but the stream continues.
Speaker 1: Waiting for a retransmission might cause a long freeze, which
Speaker 1: is worse exactly.
Speaker 2: The application itself might handle some level of error correction
Speaker 2: or just tolerate minor losses. So UDP is perfect for
Speaker 2: those kinds of real time applications.
Speaker 1: So that combination IP for the basic addressing and routing,
Speaker 1: then TCP for reliability when you need it and UDP
Speaker 1: for speed. When that's the priority that covers a huge
Speaker 1: range of.
Speaker 2: Uses, it's an incredibly flexible and powerful combination. It really
Speaker 2: is the invisible glue holding our incredibly diverse digital world together,
Speaker 2: allowing everything from secure banking to watching cat videos.
Speaker 1: Okay, so all these layers, all these protocols, they eventually
Speaker 1: enable the applications we actually use every day, often without
Speaker 1: giving the underlying tech a second thought.
Speaker 2: Like the Worldwide Web, absolutely tim berners Lee's invention. Now
Speaker 2: this vast worldwide collection of content, and you have organizations
Speaker 2: like the W three C, the Worldwide Web Consortium, working
Speaker 2: to develop standards and protocols so it all hopefully works together,
Speaker 2: and our.
Speaker 1: Browsers are doing a lot of work behind the scenes
Speaker 1: fetching and displaying stuff. And it's not just static pages anymore.
Speaker 2: No, much of the web is highly dynamic, meaning programs
Speaker 2: running on servers generate web pages specifically for you based
Speaker 2: on your request or your profile. Think online shopping, social
Speaker 2: media feeds.
Speaker 1: Right, And none of that works without being able to
Speaker 1: find the server in the first place, which brings us
Speaker 1: to DNS, the domain name.
Speaker 2: System, crucial piece of the puzzle. When you type a
Speaker 2: website name like www dot example dot com. Your computer
Speaker 2: has no idea where that is. It needs the numerical
Speaker 2: IP address like a phone book for the Internet kind
Speaker 2: of yeah. DNS is described as a hierarchical naming scheme
Speaker 2: and a distributed database system. It translates those human friendly
Speaker 2: names into the IP addresses that routers actually understand. Without DNS,
Speaker 2: browsing would mean memorizing strings of numbers.
Speaker 1: No, definitely wouldn't have caught on as well. But this
Speaker 1: very openness, this interconnectedness that makes the Internet so powerful,
Speaker 1: it also creates big challenges, doesn't it, particularly around security
Speaker 1: and privacy.
Speaker 2: That's the double edged sword. Yes, the design facilitates community,
Speaker 2: but also potential misuse. One major issue highlighted is the
Speaker 2: distributed denial of service attack ds DS.
Speaker 1: What exactly is happening there?
Speaker 2: It's where attackers get many machines on the network, often
Speaker 2: compromise computers or devices to send traffic towards a victim
Speaker 2: machine in an attempt to exhaust its resources, flood the
Speaker 2: target so legitimate users can't get through.
Speaker 1: And where do these attacking machines come from? Traditionally it
Speaker 1: was hacked PCs.
Speaker 2: Right, Historically, yes, botnets of infected computers, But the book
Speaker 2: points out a major new vector the proliferation of insecure
Speaker 2: IoT devices Internet of things devices.
Speaker 1: Like smart light bulbs, security.
Speaker 2: Cameras, exactly, thermostats, appliances, anything connected to the Internet. And
Speaker 2: here's the really startling bit from the source material. Can
Speaker 2: a coordinated attack by a million Internet connected smart toasters
Speaker 2: take down Google?
Speaker 1: Seriously smart toasters?
Speaker 2: It sounds absurd, but the underlying point is serious. The
Speaker 2: book states, unfortunately that much of the IoT industry in
Speaker 2: particular is unconcerned with software security. They just want to
Speaker 2: ship cheap devices quickly, so they.
Speaker 1: Become easy targets to rope into these massive attacks.
Speaker 2: Precisely, and it leaves the network operators, the ISPs, and
Speaker 2: others trying to defend against potentially huge floods of traffic
Speaker 2: coming from these everyday insecure gadgets. It's a massive headache.
Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, beyond attacks, there's the privacy angle too. With
Speaker 1: everything connected.
Speaker 2: Yeah, data collection is pervasive. As the book says, it
Speaker 2: is becoming increasingly easier for various parties to collect data
Speaker 2: about how each of us uses the.
Speaker 1: Network and who are these various parties.
Speaker 2: It's a long list, your internet service provider, your mobile
Speaker 2: phone carrier, applications, websites, cloud hosting services, content delivery networks,
Speaker 2: device manufacturers, advertisers, and web tracking software vendors. Basically almost
Speaker 2: everyone involved in delivering your online experience could be collecting data.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of potential watchers. Now, just to be
Speaker 1: really clear for our listeners, our aim here is just
Speaker 1: to explain the technology and the challenge and just discussed
Speaker 1: in the field as presented in our source. We're not
Speaker 1: taking a stance on the debates around data collection or
Speaker 1: IoT security ourselves.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, We're just unpacking the technical realities and the issues
Speaker 2: network engineers and researchers grapple with based on the text.
Speaker 1: So wrapping this section up, it feels like the digital
Speaker 1: age is this constant balancing act, incredible innovation and convenience
Speaker 1: on one side.
Speaker 2: And this ever present, always evolving need for security and
Speaker 2: privacy on the other, and it's all fundamentally shaped by
Speaker 2: the network architecture itself. It's a dynamic, ongoing tension.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, So when you.
Speaker 2: Really connect all these dots, the digital experiences you have
Speaker 2: every single day, that simple message you send, the complex
Speaker 2: movie you stream, they're all built on this incredibly complex,
Speaker 2: often invisible, but really clever foundation of network architecture.
Speaker 1: It really is invisible, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Mostly Yeah, From the actual physical cables carrying light pulses
Speaker 2: or the radio waves zipping through the air, all the
Speaker 2: way up to those abstract layers of software are the
Speaker 2: protocols organizing and directing everything. Engineers have solved just astounding
Speaker 2: problems to let us communicate globally at effectively light speed.
Speaker 1: So what's the takeaway for you, the listener? Maybe the
Speaker 1: next time you effortlessly send an email or stream that
Speaker 1: HD video or even just you know, check a price
Speaker 1: on your phone, like we talked.
Speaker 2: About, yeah, maybe take half a second, just take.
Speaker 1: A moment and appreciate that invisible symphony, the light, the electricity,
Speaker 1: the layers upon layers of carefully designed rules that make
Speaker 1: it all just work. It's a truly profound testament to
Speaker 1: human ingenuity.
Speaker 2: It really is.
Speaker 1: And it's a reminder too that even the technologies that
Speaker 1: feel totally commonplace now they hide this deep, fascinating world
Speaker 1: of constant innovation. Definitely, And maybe here's a final thought
Speaker 1: to leave you with, Building on some security principles mentioned
Speaker 1: in the book. Think about the principle of economy of mechanism,
Speaker 1: the idea that simpler systems generally have fewer bugs and
Speaker 1: fewer ways.
Speaker 2: To be attacked right keep it simple possible.
Speaker 1: And the principle of least authority, the idea that any
Speaker 1: component software or hardware should only have the absolute minimum
Speaker 1: permissions it needs to do its job, and no more limits.
Speaker 2: The damage if something goes wrong exactly.
Speaker 1: Now, consider how those principles might apply not just to
Speaker 1: network security, but maybe to other complex systems in your
Speaker 1: own life, your smart home set up, maybe your city's
Speaker 1: traffic light system, it's power grid.
Speaker 2: Interesting extension, how much.
Speaker 1: Do we really understand the unseen layers, the hidden rules
Speaker 1: and mechanisms that govern so much of modern life, And
Speaker 1: maybe more importantly, what responsibility do we have to try
Speaker 1: and understand them a little better? Something to think about