I’m not that knowledgeable on networking, but I do remember that if a device is connected to a wired network, it can end up receiving packets not meant for it because switches will flood all the ports for packets they don’t know how to route. But I also heard that Wi-Fi is supposedly smarter than that and a device connected to it should never receive a packet not meant for it.

Is this true? And in practice, does this mean it’s preferable should keep computers with invasive operating systems (which might decide to record foreign packets sent to it in its telemetry) on Wi-Fi instead of on the wired network?

Also, how exactly does Wi-Fi prevent devices from receiving the wrong packets when it’s a radio based system and any suitable antenna can receive any Wi-Fi signal? Does each device get assigned a unique encryption key and so is only capable of decrypting packets meant for it? How secure is it actually?

  • bad_news@lemmy.billiam.net
    351·
    1 day ago

    You’re thinking of hubs, not switches. Back in the 90’s everything was on hubs and every packet was broadcast to everything on the hub. Switches only send packets where they are going downstream. Also everything and its mom is TLS encrypted these days.

    • twinnie@feddit.uk
      19·
      1 day ago

      Switches will flood a network when they don’t know the location of a MAC address but this should only happen for the very first packet which is more likely to be DHCP or some boring background thing like that. As soon as the correct devices get the packet and replies then each switch along the way will update its MAC address table and they’ll know exactly which port to use until it expires (which depends on the switch, I don’t have a ballpark idea).

    • irmadlad@lemmy.worldEnglish
      51·
      1 day ago

      You’re thinking of hubs

      Just the word hub, makes me cringe. People would just willie-nilly put a hub anywhere. There is like a limit to how many hubs you can have in succession. I think it’s 5 or 6.