Networking Nerd
networkingnerd.net · Personal blog · on HN since 2012
Networking Nerd is a personal blog on networking, Apple features, IPv6, and tech career topics.
What HN saysHN mostly links its 2016 post explaining how Apple Watch Mac unlock uses Wi-Fi time-of-flight to check proximity and resist relay attacks.
17HN people shared it
5linked it in comments
14stories submitted
302story points
3 months agolast shared
2012people per year2026
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What HN people wrote when they linked it
BluSyn · 2022-05-17
Could latency/time-of-flight threshold be reduced to determine proximity? Requires very accurate clocks on both ends, and support in the wireless cards. Apple developed something similar for Apple Watch unlock on MacOS [1].
[1] https://networkingnerd.net/2016/09/21/apple-watch-unlock-802-11ac-and-…
moduspol · 2022-05-17
Apparently the Apple Watch does it when using the "unlock your Mac" feature.
https://networkingnerd.net/2016/09/21/apple-watch-unlock-802-11ac-and-…
Operyl · 2019-09-15
Here’s a good article further explaining it for those curious: https://networkingnerd.net/2016/09/21/apple-watch-unlock-802-11ac-and-…
macrolime · 2019-08-08
Apple Watch Mac unlock uses time of flight to prevent relay attacks. Wouldn't that prevent this kind of thefts?
Here's a description of the Apple Watch Mac unlock process
https://networkingnerd.net/2016/09/21/apple-watch-unlock-802-11ac-and-…
pas · 2018-05-25
LWN ( https://lwn.net/Kernel/Index/#Networking ), LWN + kernel documentation ( https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tre… ) , more LWN + iproute2 source/news/commitlog ( https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/network/iproute2/iproute2.git/log/ and https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/network/iproute2/iproute2.git/log/ip << basically the names will give you what to search for on LWN ), and a bit more reading ( https://www.netdevconf.org/ )
... and trying them (the features) out. In VMs and in other network simulators. ( http://mininet.org/overview/ comes to mind, but simply using Vagrant / Virtualbox is okay )
Also, networking is very standardized (duh :)), so if you follow network related stuff ( https://www.reddit.com/r/networking/ ), you can sort of get a feel for what might come to the Linux kernel.
LWN is still the best in this regard, because it deals with new developments, so reading the archives will tell you what might be in the kernel.
Furthermore, since nowadays everything is kube-cloud-virtual-container-open-netes-stack, looking at network developments for these technologies will get you in the know. (Seemingly bonkers stuff, like BGP for containers is now bog standard with things like Calico. Running a full switch in kernel with an awesome distributed overlay network for "cloud" without OpenFlow? OVN by OVS got your back. Doing all this fast? DPDK is uber fast, but XDP is just so conveniently clever.)
Plus there's the…