The Invisible Negotiation Between Your Laptop and...

The Invisible Negotiation Between Your Laptop and the Air WiFi: Radio Physics, Collision Avoidance, and the Name That Means Nothing Reading time: ~15 minutes You typed a URL into your browser and hit Enter. Before a single byte of your request left your laptop, your WiFi card performed a dance of radio physics, collision avoidance, and cryptographic negotiation that would make a diplomat proud. It listened to the air to make sure nobody else was talking. It picked a random backoff timer in case