#network-security
29 episodes
#4698: What a Business Fibre SLA Actually Guarantees
DIA circuits promise 99.9% uptime, but the fine print tells a different story. Here's what you're really buying.
#4697: Why Your Speed Test Lies About Your Internet
The speed test number hides bufferbloat, jitter, and loss. Here's what actually tells you if your connection is good.
#4638: Traffic Shaping: How Routers Decide Who Gets Bandwidth
Token buckets, bufferbloat, and why your router's QoS settings might be lying to you.
#4635: Your Phone Is a Firewall Blind Spot — Here's Why
Android ships with no user-facing firewall, and cellular isn't the safe LAN you think. We dig into what's exposed and what actually protects you.
#4632: What Your Speed Test Is Really Measuring
Speed tests measure a journey, not a pipe. Here's how ISPs game results and what in-flight Starlink benchmarks reveal.
#4582: Designing a Home MCP Gateway for Conversational AI
How to securely connect ChatGPT to a home-hosted MCP gateway — transport, auth, and the missing pieces.
#4542: Going Fully SIP: Why It's Not Ready (Yet)
A deep dive into the three structural reasons you can't ditch your carrier for Twilio and SIP—yet.
#4541: What Would We Build If Cellular Started From Zero?
Exploring whether GSM's legacy parts—IMEI, SIM, circuit switching—are still needed in an all-IP world.
#4425: DNS Blocking That Doesn't Break Everything
How to block ads and trackers at the network level without breaking your spouse's banking app or your kid's game.
#3901: Traceroute Beyond the Basics: Path Diagnostics
Discover what traceroute actually reveals about network paths, firewalls, and multi-WAN failover.
#3892: Unlocking Hidden Android Cellular Diagnostics
Fix slow Android data by using hidden settings like dialer codes, APN configs, and band selection—no root required.
#3804: Stateful Firewalls vs. Modern Threats
Is a basic firewall still enough in 2026? We break down what each security layer actually catches—and misses.
#2831: What VPNs Still Protect After HTTPS
HTTPS encrypts your content but leaves your metadata exposed. Here's what a VPN still protects.
#2815: Free Cloudflare WAF: Is It Enough for Self-Hosting?
Skip Cloudflare Access and lock down Home Assistant with just the free WAF rules. Here's how.
#2587: Where to Draw the Line on DNS Blocking
DNS-level ad and tracker blocking compared — where each tool shines, where they fall short, and the real tradeoffs.
#2297: How to Scrape Geo-Restricted Israeli Sites with MCP Tools
Learn how to bypass advanced bot-protection on Israeli websites using MCP tools, residential IPs, and tunneling techniques.
#2292: Inside the Walled Garden: China's Parallel Internet
Explore China’s parallel internet ecosystem—how the Great Firewall works, the apps that dominate it, and the surprising innovations it fosters.
#2104: The Envelope Problem: Why Your VPN Isn't Enough
A VPN isn't magic. Learn how DNS and SNI leaks expose your browsing, and what encrypted DNS and ECH actually do to fix it.
#1908: The Web's New Bouncer: When to Block AI Bots
AI bots are crawling the web like a bank heist. Are Cloudflare's new controls protecting your content, or just helping Google?
#1876: Signal Bars Are a Lie: How to Read Your Real Connection
Those signal bars are a lie. Learn the real numbers—RSRP, RSRQ, SINR—that tell you if your connection is actually good.
#1872: The Pinky Promise That Broke Email
SMTP is broken. DMARC is the fix. Learn why your emails might vanish after April 2026 and how to stop domain spoofing.
#1869: The Invisible Broadcast That Bypasses Your Dead Phone
No signal, no SIM, no problem. Discover the hidden GSM radio channel that hijacks your phone to scream warnings, and why it works when everything e...
#1847: The Home Lab Blackout: Fixing Servers From a Beach
Your server is down and you're miles away. Learn the three simple checks that keep your home lab alive and how to get back in when the front door i...
#1758: The Internet's Physical Bread Delivery System
Netflix doesn't stream from California to Jerusalem. It uses local boxes in your city. Here's how the internet physically moves data to you.