Hey everyone, welcome back to My Weird Prompts. I am Corn, and I am sitting here in our living room in Jerusalem with my brother, the man who probably has more network diagrams in his head than actual memories of our childhood.
Herman Poppleberry, at your service. And hey, those network diagrams are beautiful, Corn. They have a logic and a flow that real life often lacks. But you are right, I have been thinking about packets and protocols since I was ten years old.
It shows, Herman. It really shows. So, our housemate Daniel sent us a voice note this morning that really piqued my interest. We have spent a lot of time lately talking about our own home setup, you know, tweaking the server in the basement and trying to get the best coverage for our yard. But Daniel wants us to think bigger. Much bigger. He is asking about the scale of an international airport, specifically mentioning John F. Kennedy International in New York.
Oh, I love this. Going from a home lab where you are managing maybe fifty devices on a good day to a massive transit hub like John F. Kennedy International is not just a change in scale. It is a change in kind. It is the difference between building a birdhouse and building a skyscraper. The physics are the same, but the engineering requirements are worlds apart. Especially right now in early twenty twenty-six, with major phases of the massive redevelopment projects at JFK starting to come online and others still under construction.
Exactly. Daniel was asking about the sheer number of access points, the backhaul requirements, and how you even begin to separate the traffic for things like security, airline operations, and then the thousands of passengers who just want to stream a movie while they wait for their flight. It is a massive undertaking.
It really is. And since it is January of twenty twenty-six, the technology we are looking at for these deployments has actually leaped forward significantly in the last couple of years. We are not just talking about old school Wi-Fi anymore. We are talking about highly coordinated, advanced, often A-I-assisted radio resource management that has to handle tens of thousands of concurrent connections without breaking a sweat.
So let us start there, Herman. When you are looking at a space like John F. Kennedy International Airport, how do you even begin to plan the physical layout? You cannot just walk around with a router and hope for the best.
No, definitely not. It starts with what we call a predictive site survey, but on a massive scale. You take the architectural blueprints of the entire terminal—and with the new Terminal One and Terminal Six projects, these are some of the most complex structures in the world. You factor in everything: the thickness of the concrete walls, the specialized glass partitions that often have metallic coatings, the massive steel supports, and even the estimated density of the crowds. In twenty twenty-six, we use digital twin software that creates a highly detailed virtual replica of the airport to simulate how radio waves move and then tune it with on-site measurements.
And I imagine the sheer volume of metal and glass in an airport makes that a nightmare.
It is a total nightmare, Corn. Glass is surprisingly reflective for certain frequencies, and all those steel beams create multi-path interference. For a single major terminal at JFK, you could be looking at on the order of a thousand or more access points. If you look at the entirety of the airport complex, including the hangars and the cargo areas, you are easily talking about many thousands of access points, potentially into the five-figure range.
Many thousands of access points. That is mind-boggling. And these are not just the little pucks we have on our ceiling, right?
Right. These are high-density, enterprise-grade units. In a modern twenty twenty-six deployment, these are predominantly Wi-Fi six and Wi-Fi six E, with Wi-Fi seven starting to appear in new high-end rollouts. The reason Wi-Fi seven is such a potential game changer for airports is Multi-Link Operation, or M-L-O. It allows a device to connect to multiple frequency bands—two point four gigahertz, five gigahertz, and six gigahertz—simultaneously. This reduces latency and helps manage that high-density environment where you have hundreds of people huddled around a single gate.
Okay, so you have thousands of access points. They all have to be connected to something. Daniel mentioned backhaul. In our house, backhaul is just an Ethernet cable running to the basement. What does backhaul look like when you have thousands of access points spread across miles of airport?
That is where the real infrastructure investment lives. You have to build a massive fiber optic backbone. Each terminal has dozens of I-D-F closets—that stands for Intermediate Distribution Frame. These are essentially mini-server rooms scattered every few hundred feet. Because copper Ethernet runs have a standardized maximum length of 100 meters (about 328 feet), you have to have these closets to aggregate the connections from the access points in that immediate area.
And then those closets all feed back to a central hub?
Exactly. They connect via high-speed fiber links—commonly 25, 40, 50, or even 100 gigabit Ethernet—to a Main Distribution Frame, or M-D-F. In an airport environment, redundancy is the name of the game. You do not just have one fiber run; you have a dual-homed mesh of fiber so that if a construction crew accidentally cuts a cable while working on a new baggage carousel, the network stays up without dropping a single packet.
That makes sense. But let us talk about the logic of the network. Daniel was really curious about the V-LAN separation. In our house, we have a guest network and a main network. But an airport has to be much more complex than that. You have the T-S-A, Customs and Border Protection, the airlines themselves, the retail shops, and then the public. How do you keep all of those people on the same physical hardware but logically separated?
This is where we move beyond simple V-LANs into something called V-R-F, or Virtual Routing and Forwarding, combined with a Zero Trust architecture. Think of it like this: a V-LAN is like having different rooms in the same house. You share the same hallways and the same front door. V-R-F is like having entirely different houses built on the same foundation. The traffic for the T-S-A is logically invisible to the traffic for a passenger in the food court. They are using the same wires and the same access points, but at the software layer, they are completely isolated.
So if I am a passenger and I am sitting at the gate, my data is being transmitted by the same physical antenna that might be transmitting sensitive airline flight data?
Potentially, yes. But they are encrypted with different keys and tagged with different identifiers. The access point is essentially acting as a multi-tenant host. It is slicing up the airwaves. For the security-critical stuff, like the stuff the Federal Aviation Administration or the airlines use, they often use a separate S-S-I-D—the name of the network—that is not even broadcast. And they typically use W-P-A three Enterprise security, often with certificate-based authentication for every device in high-security environments. Interestingly, in twenty twenty-six, a growing number of airports are also deploying Private Five-G networks on the C-B-R-S band for things like baggage tugs and fueling systems, just to keep that critical operational traffic off the Wi-Fi entirely.
I see. And what about the performance for the passengers? I have been in airports where the Wi-Fi is great until the terminal gets crowded, and then it just dies. How do they handle that sudden influx of people? Like when three jumbo jets land at the same time and suddenly two thousand people are all trying to check their email at once.
That is the density challenge Daniel mentioned. In twenty twenty-six, network controllers use advanced algorithmic, often machine-learning–assisted, load balancing. If one access point is getting slammed because a flight just emptied out, the controller will actually tell nearby access points to increase their power or change their sensitivity to "peel off" some of those users. It is a constant, shifting dance of radio frequencies.
It sounds like a living organism.
It really does. And you also have to consider Quality of Service, or Q-o-S. The airport network engineers will prioritize certain types of traffic. Voice over I-P calls for airline staff or critical data for the baggage handling systems will always get priority over someone trying to watch a high-definition video on a streaming service. The system is constantly weighing the importance of every packet.
Let us talk about the team required to run this. Daniel asked about the investment and the people. You cannot just have one "I-T guy" for JFK.
Oh, definitely not. You are looking at a dedicated Network Operations Center, or N-O-C, that is staffed twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. This team would likely consist of dozens of people. You have the high-level network architects who plan the long-term upgrades, the security specialists who are constantly monitoring for threats or lateral movement attempts, and then the field technicians.
The field technicians must be busy. If you have thousands of access points, something is always breaking.
Statistically, yes. At any given moment, there is probably an access point somewhere in the airport that has failed or is acting up. The N-O-C sees this on their dashboard immediately. They can often fix things remotely by rebooting or reconfiguring, but sometimes a technician has to get on a ladder in the middle of a busy terminal to swap out a unit. And because it is an airport, they have to go through security screening just to get to their job site. It is a massive logistical hurdle.
What about the cost? Daniel mentioned investment. We are talking about millions of dollars, right?
Easily. The hardware alone—the access points, the high-end switches, the miles of fiber—that is a multi-million dollar capital expenditure. Then you have the licensing fees for the software that manages it all. Many enterprise systems now use a subscription model where you pay per access point, per year. When you have many thousands of them, those recurring costs are astronomical. And that is before you even pay a single salary. We are talking about an annual operating budget in the tens of millions for a place like JFK.
It makes me realize how much we take for granted when we just click "connect" on our phones. We do not see the literal miles of glass fiber or the room full of people monitoring the signal-to-noise ratio in Terminal Five.
Exactly. And the security aspect Daniel brought up is so critical. Airports are high-value targets for cybercrime. You have a lot of people in a "relaxed" or "distracted" state, which makes them prime targets for things like "Evil Twin" attacks. That is where a hacker sets up a fake access point with the same name as the airport Wi-Fi to intercept data.
How does a professional network like JFK's fight back against that?
They use something called Wireless Intrusion Prevention Systems, or W-I-P-S. The official access points are constantly scanning the airwaves for any "rogue" transmitters. If they see an unauthorized device broadcasting the airport's S-S-I-D, the system can actually launch a de-authentication attack against the rogue device, essentially jamming it so it cannot trick any passengers. It is a digital cat-and-mouse game happening right over your head while you are buying a Cinnabon.
That is fascinating. Now, what about upgrades? Technology moves so fast. By the time you finish installing thousands of Wi-Fi access points, is Wi-Fi eight already on the horizon?
That is one of the biggest challenges. The upgrade cycle for an airport is usually five to seven years. They cannot just swap everything out every time a new iPhone comes out. This is why they invest so heavily in the "backbone." If you have high-quality fiber and modern switches that can handle the power requirements, you can swap out the access points at the ends of the lines more easily.
So the fiber is the "forever" part of the investment, or at least the long-term part.
Exactly. In twenty twenty-six, we are seeing an emerging move toward "Open Roaming" standards as well. In places that support it, this allows your phone to automatically and securely connect to the airport Wi-Fi without you having to go through a messy captive portal or watch an ad. It uses some of the same underlying ideas that allow your phone to roam between cell towers.
Oh, I have seen that. It is so much more convenient. But it must require a huge amount of coordination between the airport and the service providers.
It does. It relies on a global federation of identities. Your home internet provider or your cell carrier "vouches" for you, and the airport network accepts that credential. It is a great example of how these massive networks are becoming more integrated with the rest of the world's digital infrastructure.
You know, thinking about all of this makes our home network seem like a toy. But I guess the principles are the same. We have our little V-LANs, we have our backhaul. It is just a matter of scale.
That is the beauty of networking, Corn. The fundamental concepts—routing, switching, security, and physics—they do not change. Whether you are connecting two computers in a bedroom or fifty thousand people at JFK, the packets still have to find their way from point A to point B. The airport just has a lot more "points" to worry about.
And a lot more consequences if those packets get lost. If our Wi-Fi goes down, we cannot watch a movie. If the airport Wi-Fi goes down, the entire global supply chain can take a hit.
Precisely. The "operational technology" side of an airport—the systems that handle baggage, fueling, and gate assignments—often runs on the same underlying network infrastructure as the passenger Wi-Fi. If that network fails, the airport effectively stops functioning. That is why the investment is so high. It is the central nervous system of the entire operation.
It is amazing how invisible it is. Most people walk through an airport and only think about the network if it is slow. They do not see the incredible feat of engineering that is keeping the whole thing running.
That is the goal of a good network engineer, though. If we are doing our job right, nobody knows we exist. We are the ghosts in the machine.
Well, Herman, I think you have given us a lot to think about. Daniel, thank you for sending that in. It was a great excuse for Herman to geek out on a grand scale.
Any time. If anyone else out there has a prompt that involves thousands of access points and miles of fiber optic cable, you know where to find me.
And hey, if you have been enjoying "My Weird Prompts," we would really appreciate it if you could leave us a review on Spotify or whatever podcast app you are using. It actually makes a huge difference in helping other people find the show.
It really does. You can also find us at our website, myweirdprompts dot com, where we have our full archive and a way for you to get in touch if you have a question that is keeping you up at night.
Until next time, I am Corn.
And I am Herman Poppleberry.
Keep asking those weird questions, everyone. We will be here to help you find the answers. Thanks for listening to My Weird Prompts.
See you next week!
So, Herman, be honest. If you could live in a JFK data closet for a week, would you?
Only if they have good air conditioning and a steady supply of snacks. The humming of the servers is actually quite soothing, you know.
I knew you were going to say that. Let us go get some lunch.
Sounds good. I wonder what the Wi-Fi is like at that new deli down the street...
Don't even start.
Just a quick scan, Corn! Just a quick scan...
We are done here. Bye everyone!
Bye!
