[Music] hi the Learners and welcome to module 2.1 internet connections and services so we're going to be looking at things that we usually talk about our isps wired wireless connections Etc okay so let's jump in because there's quite a bit to cover here so the first thing we're going to look at is the internet what is the internet it is a worldwide computer network consisting of computers devices and networks that's linked through some form of communication media now if I go back to what a network is the definition of a network was where I have two or more Computing devices connected through some sort of media for the purpose of sharing information does the internet do that yes two or more devices because now we're talking about connecting networks around the world through some sort of media for the purpose of sharing information and you would have seen recently that we've had a lot of Internet issues because cuse of the undersea cables that link the continents or the networks between the various continents now our when this is a wide area network this is a network that's spread over a wide geographical area such as a city country or even continents now when I wouldn't go as far as to say continents cuz the minute we go there then we talking about a global area network um and that's why they list that there as well all right so internet connections connecting to the internet and most of us don't take too much or we're not really concerned much about how we connect to the internet we just want to be connected okay so here we go with our internet connection so first thing we look at our isps now what what's an ISP well it's an internet service provider this is a company that they themselves have a permanent fast connection to the internet and then they sell you internet access and services for a monthly fee okay so anyone that does that is an ISP and there are a few examples some of the services they offer are things like not just internet hosting um and providing you that service but web page hosting maybe it's wiress and wired internet access we've seen a huge push towards Wireless as well um facts to email spam filtering email as well okay so these these are just some of the services that that they offer now there is criteria for the types of internet connections now most people prefer Broadband so what is broadband it is a highspeed high bandwidth connection to the internet know that definition please but what is the criteria what what do we look at like when when you go to buy a computer what do you look at first of all look at Mobility does it need to be an internet connection that I need to take with me on you know when I travel when I go overseas when I'm going somewhere else or can it be in one place I need to look at the speed of the connection or the line I need to look at the cap if I'm going to go with a cap connection um how much data do I need how much data does there need to be um do I need to have a limit do I need uncapped in other words there is no limit to that um does it also need to be shaped or un shaped and we're going to go into these things so that you can understand exactly what we're referring to so one of the first things is wired versus wireless connections now our wired connection we generally look at our our ADSL of fiber and ADSL is our permanent digital connection to the internet using a normal telephone line This is split into two channels one for phone calls and one for the internet this was an upgrade to the old internet connections all right now most of what we have is fiber and I've shown you in another video where um in fact what the fiber cables look like now your data is transmitted along thin glass fiber tubes it's much faster than the electrical transmission over copper cables used in ADSL so we just need to know the difference between the two which one is faster which one is more commonly used now we can see I mean they were digging up all across the country um fiber is really the backbone of what they are are using now then with our wired connections we know there is a monthly ISP cost and a fixed monthly cost for the line rental so you're looking at two costs here now there are advantages there are disadvantages um you need to go through that your ADSL is cheaper than cellular um the speeds drop the further you are away from what they call an exchange um let me see if I can find a picture here for you okay so I'm sure you've seen the these boxes yes all right you've seen them those are what we call exchanges so when they talk to The Exchange um that's where all the cables in a particular area go to and then from there they'll go to the main company so the further you are away from that exchange the speed is going to drop it is however ADSL and fiber more stable than Cellular Connections and we know that okay from experience with our phones fiber is faster it is cheaper and more stable than ADSL or cellular so you can see that fiber is the upgrade going forward we also have wireless connections to the internet and most of us know this from our cell phones and from having data or not having data whichever one hits you at the particular time of the month so this is internet connectivity without ADSL or Fiber we are either connecting to a dongle we are using our data um using smartphones tablets maybe we create a little Wi-Fi hotspot to connect other devices to the internet but this is what we what we referring to when we talk about a wireless connections now there are advantages the main one is that we can access the internet anywhere we are or at least they claim that we can do that um however the disadvantage is if you are and you and I mean I drove a while back to um omata and to Kimberly and the minute you are out in the open or on the open road you find that your speed begins to drop because the coverage is not that great okay um the other disadvantage is that you never Escape communication like even when you out of work even when you've gone home they can still contact you don't contact me and you might need to limit the amount of data you use o that's a problem data usage yeah this is why when we talk about Data Theft I know many people are guilty of that right so our WiFi this is a way of connecting to an existing ADSL or Fiber connection wirelessly okay fairly small area of coverage is our hot spot we know this when we go to KFC McDonald's any of these places shopping centers um we find that they have Wi-Fi available but they limit generally the the speed they do give it to us for free but it's just enough for you to do the basics okay and all you need to do is the basics like really you don't need more than that um you can use ADSL fiber rotters to create your own Wi-Fi network like having something like that at home and generally you'll put a password on to that so that your neighbor is not stealing your data via the Wi-Fi connection and I know many I'm not going to say oh but I know many um pick up oh wait there's a Wi-Fi connection next door or across the road oh they don't have a password let's see how fast it is yeah data Thief okay anyway then we have internet access in using smartphones and tablets people prefer data communication that is what always on and everywhere that is what fast and reliable that is what hassle free the minute a company can do that for you H they don't you know people don't care actually what they need to pay for that but if they know know the data is always going to be on it's going to be stable it's going to be fast it's going to be hasslefree that's what they're looking for okay now with regards to that people also expect their mobile devices to be always on and this is why your laptops have been designed in such a way it can go to sleep and then wake up when you need to use it um they need to be always connected as well right again it's not always so great to be always connected but this is what people expect from their mobile devices now most mobile devices have built in 3G or 4G we've gone into 5G we've gone into LTE as well cellular technology and the hardware to connect to any standard Wi-Fi network now this is a big deal because in the past your phone could only connect to certain um saluted technology so it was it was actually a huge deal when they said there was a particular phone that could now connect to 4G cellular technology even though 4G cellular technology wasn't all over the place but if it was your phone would be able to connect to that all right same with a 5G um and and LTE now uh here you'll connect to the internet using cellular technology whenever a cell phone signal is available it will automatically switch over to a Wi-Fi connection whenever that is available and then they talk a little bit about Wi-Fi versus cellular now this is important because the I know some of the tablets especially with um the Apple tablet some of them are WiFi only which means that device can only connect to a Wi-Fi network that's available if you have one that's cellular it now means that you can insert a SIM card into that device and it can then connect to you know wherever there is a cell phone signal so you'll usually find um they would say like Wi-Fi plus 3G or just Wi-Fi the Wi-Fi devices only uh will be a lot cheaper than the Wi-Fi and cellular all right so by having data we can also do realtime messaging again we know this instant messaging right WhatsApp Facebook Messenger all these lovely things um it's not like smss this is real time messaging so we can see the person type in we can see whether you've blue ticked us or not please don't Blue Tick us it's not nice if you don't like the feature take it off but yeah it gives people anxiety when you send a message and they've blue ticked you and they don't respond like they take an hour or they respond to you the following day it's like oh so you opened your phone you read the message and said no I will not respond um no don't do that okay so there are advantages to it obviously we can see in real time it's cheaper it's easy to communicate with someone we can do voice calls video calls all these lovely things but there are disadvantages and limitations You've Got No Control to ensure that people are who they claim to be y lot of scamming going on at the moment it can lead to antisocial behavior and unfortunately it creates opportunities for cyber stalking cyber bullying identity theft all of these type of things please people when it comes to cyber stalking don't put all your info out there don't just advertise everything out there okay and cyber bullying for those of you who are doing that stop it it's not nice it's not friendly okay um and identity theft people steal your identity I mean look at how many Facebook profiles get hacked and then they go and subscribe to things or stuff like that um people's YouTube channels the same thing has happened there as well right then we have this lovely thing called VoIP voice over Internet Protocol this is the technology that allows telephone calls to be made over networks right hands ws and the internet voice can now be transmitted again this was a big deal when it first came out Skype was one of the big communication methods that folks were using because now um you could actually be sitting there you could chat to someone you could see the person regardless of where they are in the world so yes it's cheaper it's the software is generally free you can you know you can transfer files and make video conference calls beautiful just understand also you need a proper stable fast internet connection otherwise you're going to look like a pixeled picture or blocky on the screen you're going to look like one of those movies where the people speak and then the words come afterwards it doesn't look good right um You might need to buy data in order to do that and unfortunately depending on where you are the quality of your internet connection might be slow and poor okay when this started emerging we started going into things called video conferencing as well so now and I mean this this is the norm now right we jump into a zoom meeting um especially during Co Zoom was being utilized Google meet was being utilized that's video conferencing where you have two or more people that are connecting from different areas and you can transmit audio video whatever you want to again um all the co babies out there the co kids the ones who actually survived schooling during that time well done to you you know um whether this worked or didn't work and for some of you yes it did work others it wasn't that great so just know the advantages and disadvantages of video conferencing this comes up in many different scenarios so please just familiarize yourself with that this was a question that came up as well about good practices when video conferencing well first of all you want to work in a wellet location you don't want to be in a dark room because that's what you are transmitting people are not going to be able to see you um they're just going to maybe see the the outline of your face and things like that you also want to protect your privacy so you want to make sure what the camera can and can't see and we've seen with zoom um yeah some people should just switch their camera off because what's happening in the background is sometimes not good and then you want to test the sound and video before making the call oh my word there's nothing there was nothing worse for me then you have these people join uh can you can you hear me H hello hi uh can you see me okay so you can see me yes and you can hear me okay right let's get started oh no I think people still do that right we spoke also about cloud computing previously um we know what that is be able to explain that and give an example now again with our advantages and disadvantages please with cloud computing because I'm running the program online via a web browser I don't have to worry about it being up to dat I'm not installing anything on my PC um it's all on another server that server takes care of everything the documents can be shared with others that's all fine the disadvantages though is it's only effective um if I have fast reliable internet I've got no control over the backup and security and I'm probably going to be paying a monthly fee for for that anyway right then again online storage we've spoken about this before this is just keeping our data in the cloud so just again understand the difference between cloud computing and online storage they are our disadv sorry our advantages again it's simple and coste effective to store share transfer files I can do all of those things I'm not putting anything on my local hard drive I'm saving everything online um there are some disadvantages limitations to that because Dropbox for example has a limit I think one driver as well a lot of these places unless you want to pay to be able to you know get more space online as well then we have file sharing uh with our email attachments now it's very nice to do this inexpensive relatively fast but the big disadvantage is it's not suitable for large files so emailing attachments nice but yeah um big files is not going to work and some email systems or firewalls that people have on their at their work or in the antivirus will actually block it and send it into the spam um it's not always secure because this is how a lot of viruses have come through uh and there are also restrictions on the number of recipient so you don't have to know all this but you know just one or two um so that you understand what they are talking about our file transfer protocol or FTP this is a protocol set of rules used for the transfer of files between remote computers within internet connections now this is good when it comes to large files okay so files are loaded up to an FTP server or downloaded from an FTP server and cloud storage services such as one drive have largely taken over this function okay so know what that is grid Computing comes up often as well what is it this is where we take the resources of different computers and share um and use it at the same time to solve a single problem so we're taking the processing power from multiple machines and bringing that together to get a particular answer to solve a particular problem now we use this in scientific applications some technical stuff uh it could be for example scientists who can use an entire network of computers to analyze data maybe a businessman is wanting to access an entire network of computers to forecast the growth of a particular stock right um and there's a whole Global Community around that um as well right now there are obviously advantages to that it's a costeffective solution we using many resources it provides a method to solve problems that need a lot of processing power okay and it can save money and Resources by using the power of idle computers or computers that are not being used at that particular point in time the disadvantages are you need a fast Network between the computers um the computers that are going to be used may not be fast enough so they may not have enough processing power they may even be affected um by malware and when you put all of that together that malware can spread through that as well then they talk about government internet services now there are a number of them I mean everything from renewal of TV licenses to uif telephone accounts passports IDs home Affairs you know all this type of thing um there are a lot of advantages to that because we can do a lot of this online we can access the services whenever we want to no long okay no long cues immediate feedback okay um but we we can access a lot of the stuff online before we actually go in to stand in that long queue um there are certain obstacles like the oh the digital divide is still a big one um that's a difference between those who have access to the technology and those who don't um those who know how to use it those who don't the initial cost to set up the stuff is expensive and obviously there are the concerns about security Etc but again just know about two of each and you should be good to go and that brings us to the end of this module