Jeremy Weible IT school blog

 Ethernet cables have come a long way since the beginning. The latest and greatest ethernet cable is currently Cat 8 ethernet cable. When it comes to home networking, Cat 8 is overkill as most homes usually have 1GB internet connection speeds and do not have the need to transfer that much data around their network. However, it does meet IEEE standards and if you are wanting to future proof your network, investing now is not a bad idea. It will help you prevent the need to upgrade your network cables later on down the road. The most commonly used ethernet cord currently in the market is Cat 5e cable. These cables support up to 1GB of speed which is now becoming more common in the household as ISPs are offering faster speeds all the time for residential use.

  IPv6 has now been around for a while. It helped us alleviate the problem of running out of IP addresses. It did this by creating 340 trillion possible unique IP addresses by using a 128-bit addressing scheme. Is IPv6 more secure than IPv4 though? Initially most people believe the IPv6 is more secure as it is new and has built in encryption and capabilities of checking data packets for integrity. IPv4 is capable of using IPsec but is used mostly for VPNs and not end-to-end security like IPv6. Ultimately, it boils down to how the IPsec is being used whether or not it is more secure.

 Intrusion detection and intrusion prevention systems are crucial to any network security out there. They work by monitoring network traffic packets and determine whether or not the packet is good or malicious. The detection system will simply review a copy of the packet and will allow network traffic to flow normally without any latency. A prevention system will sit in the flow of traffic monitoring the packets but can cause system latency and if the prevention system goes down so does the link its monitoring. The main difference between the two systems is that the detection system needs help from other devices or humans monitoring the system to prevent the attack from becoming worse than it already is. The prevention system is able to stop the attacks directly without the need of intervention from anyone or anything else.

 When dealing with components of a computer, the lifespan can vary by each individual piece. For example, monitors can last 10-20 years, depending on what type of monitor you use and how often you are using said monitor. A high-end mechanical keyboard can last 15-30 years whereas a cheap non-mechanical keyboard can last about 2 years. The total average of computer components is between 5-10 years. With the way technology is today, most people will tend to get new computers in the timespan and do not notice issues with their components. For some components like keyboards and mice, you tend to get what you pay for. The higher end models of these devices tend to last much longer than their cheaper counterparts.

 While there may only be 13 root servers for DNS lookup, it actually would not be as catastrophic as one might perceive it to be initially. Each server has a lot of cached information and runs on redundancy. Also, the root servers do not rely on simply one sole server. They are all connected to different server farms that help run the servers as well. These server farms are not located in one specific location and are actually located in hundreds of locations spread throughout the world. You would think all the servers going down simultaneously would cause the internet to crash, but with the fail safes in place that is not an actual reality.

 Disk defragmentation is a wonderful thing for users to understand how it works and when it is important to use. If you have a brand-new computer out of the box and just turned it on, you will not need to run the disk defrag computer application. If you have a computer that is older and has had a lot of use with file deletion or application deletion and you notice the computer is going slow, you may want to run disk defrag in order to get the computer up and running back to normal speeds. The reason the computer gets so slow is because the hard drive is attempting to locate the data that has become spread throughout the entire drive. When its new, its all in a neat orderly structure that makes retrieving data easy. When it has been used over and over the data structure begins to fail and the data is spread out through the entire hard drive.

 Simply put, a subnet is a network inside of a network. You want to use subnetting when you want to separate your networks from each other. For example, a business has computers that the public uses, but they also have computers that are meant only for employee use. The computers for employees have access to more private data that you would not want the general public to have access to, so you create a subnet that separates the public computers from the private computers the employees use. This allows for the data to be contained to just the employees’ computers that need to remain confidential. This also helps allow to control the traffic in the networks allowing for faster speeds in the area of the network you need and bottlenecking the traffic that is not as important.

 There could be many reasons why you would want to reinstall your Operating System. Sometimes it is as simple as you’re selling your computer. Other time it could be because you have a massive number of files/apps on your computer, and you just want a fresh start. No matter what your reasoning is behind it, make sure you any important files saved elsewhere before re-installing your OS to your computer. Windows OS has made it fairly easy to reinstall your OS and gives you the choice of completely removing everything or keeping all your file but removing apps and settings installed on the computer. To get to this area simply go to the setting menu and find the update and security tab. From there click on the recovery tab and choose to reset the PC. This is where it gives you the option to remove everything or keep files but remove apps and settings. The other option is to use a media device. You download it from Microsoft to a blank USB flash drive. With the flash drive inserted, reb...