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How it Works: Ralph Breaks the Internet

Disney's Ralph Breaks The Internet, the 57th entry into the Disney Animated Canon, was released on Wednesday, November 21st, 2018.

I saw it - Loved it more than the original, wanted to watch it with the mind of a Network Admin  instead of turning my brain off all the way.

While more technically sound than I expected, there are a few picks here and there.



First of all, Mr. Litwak plugs the WiFi router into the same power extension board as he does at least some of his other arcade machines.

I'd say "Good on not plugging them all into the wall!" but it would be impossible anyway. So at least 6 games would go down if that particular power supply went off, and this doesn't look like an establishment that would have a generator.

Redundancy? Not quite, but could be worse.

Now, when the router is plugged in, it's just the router. It's not hinted to be a router/switch combo like one from a ISP. There is an Ethernet cable plugged in, so let's just assume it's off screen.

When Vanellope and Ralph go into the router via it's plug, it's not working or buzzing. It should be! It's plugged into power and connected to the internet, but it's only seen as "on" when Litwak ... presses an icon on his old Macbook that has a PC Wireless Adapter that's connecting to the signal.

The sequence hints that the router is only working when someone is actively using the connection, but it doesn't work that way.

It could be something like the really old dial-up methods or establishing a connection for the first time through a ISP's splash page.

He sets up a password, so...okay on security there, even if it is a very weak password. Should be something like

01-n3-4GxM

How Ralph and Vanellope actually get around said internet - Nearly every layer in the OSI model was relatively represented from Session (Some users get disconnected) to Presentation (The eBay pages), to Physical (going to the internet via the Ethernet cable), Network (Because Instagram, Pintrest, and Amazon aren't all hosted on the same network!), Transport (actually travelling within the internet).

There's no Data Link stuff, and we'll touch upon Presentation later.

The little avatars - Cookies. One approaches Knowsmore and he says "Oh, little Isabel is going the ballet route. Let's hope it goes better than the soccer craze." Why would he say that if she didn't have a past search history?

Spoiler territory;

There is a virus that's a worm, though they never say the word worm, but it acts like one, relying on "insecurities in the code" of games.

To keep it still not-too-spoilery, this shows a case of fairly bad programming for a particular game more than anything else. I was tempted to call this particular instance part of the Presentation layer representation, but I'm not too sure.

It's well worth the time to check it out, at least.


EMPLOYERS: This is me putting knowledge to use while talking about the product of a Target Company.
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