Transcript for:
IT Fundamentals Module 4

Howdy folks, welcome to module 4 of the Comtia IT Fundamentals course, or just ITF Plus for short. Now today's module of this course consists of five units folks. So what are these five units you ask?

The first unit is going to be about networking concepts. This will shortly be followed by connecting to a network. Unit 3 will be secure web browsing. followed by using shared storage, and then lastly folks, unit 5, using mobile devices.

So there you have it guys, that is going to be the five units, or should I say five sections within this module. And if you've watched my other videos, you would know by now that those titles does not exactly tell you what's going to be in those sections. It's just a ballpark idea.

If you want a more accurate idea of what's going to be in these respective sections, you can find that in the video description down below. below. So the topics will be listed there. There's going to be nice convenient timestamps next to each of these topics. So if you're looking for something specific or if you want to go and revise on something specific, well guys the timestamps are there for you to go and make use of.

It takes me forever to go and make them so yeah by all means please go and use them. Alright folks and then if you haven't done it already, do your homie here a favor give this video a like, point that like button it really does help me out. Obviously YouTube's gonna push this in front of more people then which means I get to help more people out there That cannot afford to pay for training right and then yeah I mean if you would like to know when module 5 comes out or when I release other content, maybe also consider Subscribing maybe alright guys on that note.

I think it's time for us to go and learn something All right folks, let's start with that first unit which was networking concepts. And within this first unit, first topic we're going to be diving into is something called network components. So with regards to network components, clients and servers. What is that?

Now that, believe it or not, is something we use all the time. Most of us just don't realize necessarily that we're actually using it. Now client is especially well we as the end users actually are using every day.

That will be your laptop, your desktop, your tablet, your phone, and you use that from a day-to-day base just to go and do whatever it is you want to go and do. Whether it be to run programs on it, whether it be to play games on it, whatever, that is a client. Now from time to time, that client that you are using needs to access one or more servers of sorts. In most cases, this will be an actual server server.

It could belong to you or your company, or it could be a public one, a cloud one for that matter. This server is rendering some sort of service. This could even be something like a website for crying out loud. So when you go and grab your phone, your tablet or whatever, and you open a website, this could potentially even be YouTube, yes, that means you're using your client to access a server. and that server is hosting a website which is in this case yep youtube then we also get something called network types now that in short is actually just the type of network you have or should i say the size of your network now i'm going to list three of them for you guys but i do want to point out that the three i'm going to list for you guys is not the only ones these three i'm going to list is the only ones you need to know at this point in time when it comes to this course this specific exam but should you want to know more yes there are more and there are bigger ones those ones get discussed more in depth in the CompTIA A plus course and even more so if you were to go and take it a step further which would be the CompTIA Network plus course both of which can be found on my channel but this course unfortunately only covers the first three that mean this is IT fundamentals after all and the first one of those three is something called personal area network we just call it a PAN for short So the PAN is obviously abbreviation for personal area network.

Now this folks is the smallest kind of network you can potentially get. So if you can imagine yourself sitting at a desk, this could be your office desk or a desk in your home. When you sit at that desk in front of your laptop or in front of your desktop screen, basically anything that's within arm's reach is basically part of your PAN.

This could potentially be a printer. So if you've got one of those cheap small printers that's on your desk, it doesn't matter whether you connect that printer via USB, via Wi-Fi. It doesn't matter. The fact that it's next to your machine and connected to your machine, that makes it part of your PAN. In this PAN, you could potentially also have your phone.

Yes. So if you were to go and try and connect your phone or your tablet to your computer, Once again, it doesn't matter whether this is via some sort of cable, like a USB cable of sorts, or whether this is wirelessly via Bluetooth or whatever, maybe your home Wi-Fi network, doesn't matter. It's still part of your PAN.

Now, as soon as you go and try and add one extra computer to this equation, doesn't matter where it is, I mean, if it's somewhere else in your home or your office, as soon as you go and connect one extra computer to this network, now it's no longer a PAN. It is in fact what we call A LAN, Local Area Network. Now, Local Area Network, folks, is obviously one click higher, a little bit bigger than a pan. And I'm saying a little bit, it can actually be quite large sometimes.

So, a LAN is normally two computers or more. And for the most part, you will usually find these machines in the same building. Now, unfortunately, that's not set in stone.

So, usually, yes, you would find these two machines in the same home or in the same office building. But there is a chance that there might potentially be two or three office buildings very close to one another in proximity. And these two or three office buildings are actually connected to one another wirelessly.

And that would in fact still form part of your land. One big land, but a land nonetheless. So these lands, they normally have somewhere between two machines and up. Normally it'll be a couple of hundred, maybe a hundred to two hundred.

But they can actually extend to a few hundred or a few thousand machines in some. cases which is actually becoming more and more common these days because if you look at the average person they don't just have one device they normally have two or three devices a laptop or a desktop and potentially a phone or a tablet so at the very least the average person sits with two devices so that means these two devices both need an ip address so you know networks these days guys have gotten quite large and then we've got what we call a wide area network more commonly known as a WAN for short. So wide area network, this may or may not be two LANs or more connected to one another. So maybe you've got one office building in one side of town and another office building or a branch office in the other part of town. And if you were to go and link these two offices to one another, I mean they both belong to you or your company, that would actually be part of a WAN.

Now normally how we do this is obviously not via cable because that's way too expensive. Instead... we would use long-range wireless communication.

This wireless communication normally unfortunately needs line of sight. So depending on where these two offices are, the chances are you might not get line of sight. So normally in that situation, which is not actually part of this course mind you, we would use what we call repeaters. So the first office would have a dish of sorts on its roof pointing towards some place very high, another tall building or a tall hill somewhere. and from that building or or hill it's very high up there would be another repeater pointing towards another place and then another place and eventually it's going to get to his destination which is obviously via the office so here we go guys that's the three kinds of networks you need to know for itf plus so if you intend on writing this exam that's the only ones you need to know but nothing stops you from obviously exploring further so if you'd like to know more about those you're welcome to ask in the comment section down below and i'll tell you exactly which videos to go and look for Alternatively, you can just go and Google it yourself or YouTube it yourself and you will find that there's actually other ones out there.

I mean, for example, just to give you an idea, you also get something called MAN, M-A-N, which is a Metropolitan Area Network, and you also get something called GAN, G-A-N, which is a Global Area Network. And that's just a few. I haven't even mentioned the other ones you get, but those are other ones you could potentially get which are obviously bigger.

All right folks and then the next topic I've got for you here is network media. Now this consists of a lot of things and ironically one of the first things is nodes and hosts. Why that's ironic is it's actually very much the same as what we discussed in a previous topic when we spoke about clients and hosts.

Very very much the same thing. So something like a node would be something like a computer, a laptop, generally that's what that would be. A host is a machine providing something like a service in most cases. Generally that's going to be a server.

I'm not saying it's limited to service. Very often you'll find something like a client can in fact actually be a host depending on what it is hosting. Then we get what we call wired data connections. So you get wireless and you get wired.

Wired means it works with a wire, a cable of sorts. I think that's pretty obvious. And when it comes to wired data connections, especially with laptops, desktops, that kind of stuff, you get copper cabling, which is, for the most part, probably the most common kind of cabling we're going to be using.

A lot of the different kinds of cabling we use with computers is always copper-based. What are we talking about? Cat 3, Cat...

cat5 cat5e cat6 cat6a cat7 cat8 all of those use copper and if you go look at the old kind of cables we used to use like coaxial also copper based cables although nowadays they're actually more steel than copper but still you get the idea so we've got copper cabling then we've got fiber optic cabling which is very common nowadays you'll find that most businesses and most homes these days use what we call fiber optic cabling has no copper in it, works with glass and light. Light reflects against the glass inside of this cable so you get massive distances, massive speeds. One of the very few downsides about this cable is it's actually very sensitive. And what I mean by that is if you were to go and bend this cable, you're actually going to go and break the glass inside.

So normally if we've got excess cable, you'll find a technician will normally go and roll it up in a big roll so that it doesn't bend the glass inside or break the glass inside. Then another one we find under wired data connections, the only reason I'm mentioning this here is because it's part of the course, but if it was up to me, I would not, is Ethernet. Now Ethernet, guys, is not a specific kind of cable.

It's a category. It's like saying wired data connections in general. It's a category. So Ethernet, for the most part, is going to be your normal LAN cables, which is your Cat5, Cat6, those kinds of cables.

but it's not limited to your normal network LAN cables. Ethernet, for those of you who don't know, actually includes the old cables like coaxial, and it also includes the newer cables like fiber optic. So Ethernet is a very broad net I'm actually throwing.

Then, folks, we get wireless data connections, which means there's no cabling involved. So when it comes to wireless data connections, what kind of connections do we get? That's going to be things like your Bluetooth. It's going to be things like connecting to your home or your office router or access point.

So for those of you that's curious or would like to know more about this, that's covered in more depth in A plus and N plus, but I think actually A plus would actually be enough. So you'll find there's about six wireless standards you need to know. And for the most part, they all start off 802.11, and then there's going to be a letter behind that.

The letter will normally dictate what kind of frequency you're working with. what speed it is, what's the maximum distance, you know, frequency and all that kind of stuff. So for now, all you need to know when it comes to this specific course is wireless means there's no cable involved and it means you can go and connect to something, well, wirelessly.

It can be two phones, two laptops, a laptop to your office network, that kind of thing. Then we get WAN links. WAN links is normally the port on your router in most cases.

I'm not saying it will be limited to that, but normally on all routers you'll find this one port on it that says WAN. That is the cable you're gonna go and plug in that's gonna allow that router to have access to, well, the outside world, the Internet. Now most routers these days, the WAN port is normally an RJ45 connector, a LAN cable in short. You'll find some of the newer versions of routers will actually have a fiber port there.

So it'll still say WAN, but instead it'll take a fiber cable. So even though you might have fiber internet at your home, you know, fiber optic cabling and all that, it does not necessarily mean the fiber cable is going to plug into your WAN port. So you might have fiber internet, but you might still have a good old-fashioned LAN cable, you know, RJ45 cable plugging into your WAN port. It all depends on your router.

So the WAN link guys is the main link going to the outside world, you know from your home network or your office network And it's ultimately what provides you access to the internet So this WAN link could potentially be fiber optic cabling, you know, probably your most common one these days It could be copper cabling, you know when we say copper We know that's a very wide net because that includes a lot of things. It's like saying Ethernet. It could be cellular radio So maybe you're connected completely wirelessly Or, which is pretty cool these days, satellite.

It can actually be satellite. Right, folks, that brings us to the end of the first unit in this module. Now moving on to unit two, connecting to a network. All right, folks, the first topic I've got for you in this unit is wireless standards. Now, I'm aware in the previous unit I did mention you don't really need to notice, but I think I'm going to cover it with you guys as an extra because, quite frankly, I don't trust CompTIA.

CompTIA does reserve the right to change their exam at any point in time whenever they feel like it. All the vendors reserve that right. And I've seen them actually enforce that rule sometimes where...

Literally out of the blue they'll say, hey, we're gonna start asking you questions about this. So just in case they decide to do that, I'm gonna cover this for you guys as a little bit of an extra. Here's a bit of a table for you guys. I've listed five standards here for you guys.

But even from an A plus perspective, if you were to go do the A plus course and go write the A plus exams, you actually just need to know the first four. Were you to take it a little bit further and push on to N plus territory, then you need to know all six. Yes, there is six even though I don't have six on the table of mine the sixth one Which is the most recent one was actually released during COVID. I think it was in 2021 somewhere So that one is 802.11ax. So it was released in 2021 somewhere.

So yeah, go figure Wow So in general, you just need to actually know the first four standards That is the frequency at which you are connecting the speed at which you're connecting and a little bit of the kind of network It is so if you look at A and G. That would be the first one and the third one on that list. They're pretty much the exact same thing.

They are the same in all aspects. The only difference between those two standards, folks, is the frequency at which they run. So if you were to go and connect to your home Wi-Fi, your office Wi-Fi, that standard is normally 802.11g, which is probably the most common one we use in our home and office environments. They say it's got a maximum transfer rate of 54 megabits per second.

Now that's what the manuals say, but I can tell you now in real life, it's absolutely not that anymore. It is way more than that. That is what it was like in the early 2000s when they released this frequency, but nowadays, way faster than that.

They don't care about that in the exams, but they want to know if you know what the original maximum transfer rate was. And that guys is 54 megabits per second. If you look at the very first one on this table which is that A standard, exactly the same as the G standard, same speed, only difference is the actual frequency at which it runs which is 5 gigahertz.

So you can actually also go and connect to that frequency via your access points, via routers and that kind of stuff. It's normally a secondary frequency. You'll find that some access points and routers can broadcast both G and A at the same time. You can actually literally go and choose which one you want to go and connect to.

Other ones, not so much. They can only do the one or the other. If they have both capabilities, they cannot necessarily broadcast both of them at the same time. Then the second standard on that list, which is the B, that is normally Bluetooth, folks.

You'll see it's got a maximum transfer rate of 11 megabits per second, according to this table, according to the courses, and according to the exams. But in real life, obviously, it's way more than that. I mean, if it was still 11 megabits per second, we would get absolutely nothing done these days. So that now these days you'll see varies from device to device. Depends on what updates you've got installed, what firmware you've got installed, what you are connecting to.

But you will notice it's got the same frequency as your normal household Wi-Fi or office Wi-Fi there. And then we've got the fourth one which is my opinion is the last one you need to know. The N frequency. That is long range high speed communication and unfortunately with that one guys you need a line off site. With the first three on this table, A, B, and G, you do not need line of sight.

They do penetrate through walls and all that, but they don't go very far. But they do penetrate through walls and objects and stuff. The N frequency goes very far, but unfortunately, it does need line of sight.

It does not penetrate through walls and objects and stuff. It doesn't have an exact fixed speed. It depends on how many channels you've got. So, you're running one channel, two channels, three channels, four channels.

It also depends on the manual you've got. Some manuals will tell you it's 154 megabits per second. Some will say 300, some will say 450, some will say 600. It all depends on how many channels you've got.

Think of it as a highway or a freeway with lanes. The more lanes you've got, the more cars you can handle per minute. So the more channels I've got, the more, well, data I can handle per minute.

N has the ability to run at both 2.4 and... 5 gigahertz it's your choice then ac kind of sort of the replacement for um for the end frequency although i don't see that many people using it runs for the most part only in 5 gigahertz and you'll find that the transfer rate is obviously much much faster if you go look at the ax frequency which is not on this list that's not even discussed in the a plus scores way faster also needs a line of sight. So the last two on this table both need line of sight with the exception of AC being a bit faster because it's obviously newer and an AX is even faster because well it's even newer newer. All right folks and then moving on to configuring an access point. Now normally most technicians with their salt will just refer to this as an AP for short.

So if you ever hear someone in IT say hey go and do that on the AP or this about an AP or that about an AP. We are normally talking about an access point. So that is a device you will go and connect to your network via a network cable and it will basically go and broadcast your network wirelessly.

So if all your machines are connected via network cables, probably Cat5 or Cat6, what if you've got something like a laptop or a phone or a tablet that wants to connect to the exact same network but not via cable but they want to go and connect wirelessly? That is where the access point comes into play. Instead of plugging that cable into a computer, you're just going to go and plug it into an access point, which will in turn go and broadcast that frequency wirelessly.

Now, when it comes to configuring this access point, it's the same as most network devices. It's the same as a router, the same as a switch, the same as a firewall, same as pretty much all network devices. You need to go and jump onto a computer that's on the same network. A laptop or a desktop has to be on the same network.

You're going to go and open a browser on that computer. It doesn't matter which one. And in the browser, in the address bar, you're going to go and type in the IP address of this NetEdit device.

In this case, it'll be the IP address of, well, the access point. That will allow you to go and connect to what is known as the admin interface via the IP address. It's probably going to ask you for a username and a password when you land on that page.

It looks like a splash page or a web page. The username is normally admin in most cases, and the password is either a blank or it's also admin. unless you've changed it, which is something you should go and do, by the way.

Always change the default password. Now, you're going to log in using the admin credentials, and you're going to go and configure basic settings, one of which would be your SSID, something I believe we did discuss earlier in this course, but in case you don't remember, that is the wireless name of your network. So if it's your home Wi-Fi, then you can probably go and use your first name or your last name as the name of the Wi-Fi so that people know that it's yours. If it is at your office, then you might want to go and use the name of your company or the name of your business or the name of your department so that people know which network this is. It is literally just to identify the Wi-Fi network to know who it belongs to or what department it actually is.

It has no real significance other than that. Then you also need to go and change the password, like I said. Because any normal technician worth their salt, they would normally know what the default passwords are.

So you should probably go and change that. on that note as an extra i would actually also recommend you go and change the default ip for this device because the default ip for most new network devices is normally or.1.1 at the end so as soon as you go and bring in a second new device to network then you're going to have an ip that is conflict and the one device is going to kick the other one off not something we want to experience so ideally change the password and also if you can change the default IP folks. All right moving on to configuring a wireless client.

Now what is meant by that folks is obviously we all have a phone or a tablet or a laptop somewhere along the line that needs to be connected to some sort of hotspot or should I say wi-fi. This wi-fi connection might possibly be in your home, it might possibly be in your office environment. Now this topic is coming at it from a computer perspective so this is 10 to 1 going to be a laptop most of the time.

So if I have a laptop that I want to go and connect, how am I going to do it? Well guys, there's a bit of a picture for you guys. So at the bottom right of that picture where you see the mouse cursor, you see it's got a little bit of a computer icon there with a little yellow exclamation mark.

That would normally have like a little Wi-Fi bar indicator. If you go click there, it's going to show you all the available Wi-Fi connections in your close proximity. And then it's as simple as just clicking the one that is yours.

You know, that's your home environment or that's your office environment. Click on the desired network and then it's going to possibly ask you for a password. Most of the time there's going to be a password.

And quite frankly, there should be a password like we discussed earlier. So if you are an employee at this company or if you work there or this network belongs to you, then obviously you would know what the password is. You type that in. you click on next and voila you would be connected to the wireless network assuming of course you stay within range to this wireless network that's one of the catches here you've got to stay within range now what's quite nice about these wireless networks and sometimes it's going to actually work against you is if you move away from that connection let's say you turn off your laptop you back it up you go away And then half a day or a couple of days later you come back.

As soon as you are within range and if your computer is on, it'll actually auto connect back to that wireless network. And the same can be said about other wireless devices like phones and tablets. But the screenshot we've got in front of us today guys is specifically from a Windows perspective, most likely a laptop. So that's where you're going to see your network status icon.

It's going to show whether you're connected or not. It might show that you're connected, but you've got limited connectivity. That means you normally don't have an IP address or something else is wrong along the line.

And moving on to cabled enterprise network access. In case you're wondering what the cheese I'm talking about, there's a couple of pictures for you guys. Obviously, it's not limited to those pictures. So guys, this includes enterprise-grade switches. Now, you probably know by now what a switch is.

And no, I'm not talking about the kind of switch you would use to go and turn a light bulb on and off. off. I'm talking about the kind of switch you would find inside a network. So the picture at the bottom, that's an example of an enterprise-grade switch.

So it allows you to go and plug in multiple network cables, normally Cat5 or Cat6 cables, into that switch and connect various devices, which is for the most part probably going to be laptops and desktops. We probably know by now it's not limited to laptops and desktops. Quite frankly, any device that's on a network that requires a cable can be connected to this switch.

This can very well be an access point perhaps, can be printers and scanners, can be a router, can be a firewall. Anything that works with a network cable can be plugged into the switch. Now you'll find in a medium to large size company, you'll normally have multiple switches and interconnections which can provide thousands of ports.

So if it's a small company, you know, like a small office, home office environment, you might have none or you might have like one or two small ones. These are not necessarily enterprise grade. The cheap ones that you can buy at your local tech store. But medium to large size companies have many switches, which are enterprise grade. So they've got lots of ports and they are normally what we call managed switches.

So you can actually log into these switches, you know, and you can actually go and configure a whole bunch of things on them, like VLANs and access lists and many, many other things, of course, as well. Then, folks, we've got wireless enterprise. network access.

So we just spoke about cables, now we're talking about wireless. So in a medium to large size company, you are probably going to have what we call access points. If it's your home environment or a very small office environment, I'm not saying you're not going to have a Wi-Fi connection, in other words a hotspot, but what I am saying is you're most likely going to be connecting straight directly to your router or your router, whatever you want to go and call it.

In some cases, you might have one, maybe two access points, but generally It's more common to see people connecting directly to the router because of how small this business actually is and because of how well close to the router they actually are. In a medium to large size company, chances are very likely that a lot of your staff members or users are nowhere near that router. So how are they going to connect to your wireless environment?

That is where access points comes into play or should I say enterprise grade access points. So these wireless access points don't just take your wired connection and broadcast it wirelessly. No, no, no. They actually do much, much more than that.

You can actually go and log into these devices, just like those switches we spoke about a moment ago, and you can go and configure many, many things. What exactly and to what extent? Well, that depends on the brand. It depends on the model and obviously how much you pay. The more you pay, the more you get, like most things in life.

So the picture I've got in front of you for today, that is an example of a Cisco access point. So that is a... pretty nifty brand, pretty expensive brand, probably one of the most expensive brands you get.

Most certainly not the only brand. Now that is what it looks like right now, but in reality that's not actually what it's going to look like, because in most cases in reality this thing is going to hang upside down from a roof somewhere. So if you look at the ports there, you'll probably notice that they're all upside down and we can't really read them. So let me swap this around for you guys.

There we go. Now you'll notice if we have it upside down, we can actually read what the freaking ports say. So it's got more than your standard LAN port, this one. It's got actually quite a few ports because you can actually go and configure quite a few things on it.

All right, guys, so that is the enterprise-grade side of wireless networks. Moving on to Unit 3 in this course. Yes, we've just reached the end of Unit 2. So Unit 3 is secure web browsing. All right folks, first topic in unit three, using free and open networks. So with regards to open access points which allow consumers to access the internet, guys, these are generally very unsecure and I'm sure somewhere along the line someone or something would have told you not to go and use one of these open networks or one of these free wi-fi connections.

If I have to shoot out the hip here and give you a couple of random ideas as to where these might be. If you go to the airports, you'll find a lot of airports tend to give you free Wi-Fi. If you go to coffee shops, a lot of them will give you free Wi-Fi. Well, sometimes there's T's and C's.

They'll probably make you buy something first before they'll allow you on the free Wi-Fi. But still, it's a free Wi-Fi connection. And you'll find them in many other places as well, potentially at schools, in libraries.

Now, the problem with these free Wi-Fi connections is any willy-nillies got access to them. So that's a concern because if there's one person on that network that knows something about something when it comes to IT and security. They will be able to intercept your computer and your connection and they could potentially, you know, get all kinds of sensitive information from you.

This could be banking information, can be passwords and usernames, identification numbers, you name it. The point is they have the ability to get something sensitive from your machine and from your connection. Trust me, you do not want that.

Now, if you have no choice about the mat and you really don't have a choice and you really have to go connect to that connection, then I suppose, well, go for it. But if you can avoid it, please try and avoid it. Do not use that free connection unless you absolutely need to.

If you really need to and you happen to have more than one device, use the one where you are less concerned if it happens to get hacked. The one that's got less sensitive information. And if at all possible, do not do something sensitive on that connection, like doing your banking or logging into something that's very, you know, sensitive in nature. Once again, if you have no choice about the matter, then I suppose you've got to do it. If then at all possible, try and use something like a VPN connection.

So you guys will find that you can go and use a VPN connection like NordVPN. I actually happen to have a NordVPN link. You guys are more than welcome to use my link.

You don't have to. But should you go and use my link, full disclosure, I do get a bit of a kickback. Not a lot. It's almost nothing.

But I do get a kickback when you guys use my link versus just go running a search for it. So if you go use a VPN connection, you are basically teleporting somewhere else where you are not. So if you're sitting in the United States and you go and use a VPN connection, you can choose to pretend to be in the United Kingdom or vice versa.

So this gives you access to resources you might otherwise not have access to. So if you go onto Netflix and there's only certain shows and movies available in your country. when you can pretend to be in another country and then suddenly you can see the shows and videos that's available in that country.

It's not actually what it was designed for but it does help with that. What I want to bring your attention to with regards to VPN and this is actually way more to advance for this course it's more A plus and N plus territory is the fact that it's not just a remote connection but it's an encrypted remote connection. So if you are doing something online which you deem as very sensitive in nature like your banking you want to go and use a VPN connection. From a trusted provider, don't just go and use some random willy-nilly VPN that you've never heard of. That's also risky because you are essentially teleporting yourself somewhere you are not.

So if you're using some unheard of VPN that you got from some sketchy website and you decide to go and use it, you're actually teleporting yourself into that network and there's going to be a whole bunch of other sketchy people on that network which are still going to end up hacking you. So if you are going to use something, use something like NordVPN or something else that's very well known like NordVPN. and then you're probably going to be a lot safer for it.

And guys, I'm going to drop that link to NordVPN in the video description down below. So if you want to go and check them out, please check out the link in the video description down below, and then you can decide whether you want to go for that or not. Anyway, regarding these open access points, which I'm telling you not to go and use in case you absolutely need to, many of them are run by telecoms companies, you know.

So there are companies out there, depending on the country you're in, that'll actually go and run these. The data is sent over... open Wi-Fi, which is not secure, which is why I'm telling you not to go and use it. And then things like your email password details may be transmitted. This could be your email password details.

Heck, guys, this could even be your Facebook login details. If you are going to be logging into Facebook, if there's some weenie on that network, it's got nothing better to do at that time. They are going to get a hold of your login details. You don't want that.

And then when it comes to public access workstations. which allow you internet access. Where would we find this?

So these workstations are computers which don't really belong to a specific individual. Instead they belong to a place or organization. They belong to the public basically and any willing to lean like me and you can go and use these machines which will give us access to the internet.

So that will probably be in a place like a library. So they're provided in libraries, internet cafes and so on. Now unfortunately some of these places might charge you money. I've seen internet cafes very rarely where you get free internet there.

There's a reason why it's called a cafe. And with regards to these machines, please be aware that workstations could potentially be infected with malware. Remember, it's not just you using that machine. So this could be accidental or it could be intentional.

Someone, somewhere along the line, once upon a time, might have inserted a flash drive or something into that machine which was infected or they downloaded something that was infected and now here you are using the same machine which is now infected. So if you're going to be plugging something into that machine, be careful. And then lastly, guys, before we move on to the next topic, clear the browser cache.

If you don't know what that is, that's your browser's temporary memory that shows what you've done, where you've been, what websites you've visited, and it has any login details potentially. So if you're done with that machine that does not belong to you, clear the browser cache, which is your temporary memory on the browser, so that the browser or the machine does not remember where you've been and any of your login details. So please do not allow the machine to save any passwords either.

That's always a bad idea. Even on your own personal machine, that's a bad idea, quite frankly. Alright, moving on. Choosing a compatible browser.

So, we actually mean web browser. So, this is an application which you are going to install on your machine. Although a lot of machines, even phones and tablets, have one or two default browsers pre-installed for your convenience. Now, at your discretion, you can go and install other ones afterwards.

You know, you can go and choose which one you want to use. And in a nutshell... This thing called a browser will allow your device to go and browse the internet and you can go and view web pages and see what the heck you're doing.

You know, that's the idea behind it. Now, some of them are good. Some of them are bad.

Sometimes some of them are equally good. At the end of the day, which one you use is going to come down to preference sometimes and sometimes functionality and compatibility. Sometimes you need the browser to do a certain thing and only a certain browser can do that.

And that might be why you chose whatever you chose. Other times it might be security related. There's been times I would see something like Mozilla Firefox would be the most secure browser and then a couple of months later Google's Chrome browser will be the most secure browser. And then zig-a-dee-zag, you know, depending on what updates they release and whatever shenanigans they pull in the background.

So for me, I have all these browsers installed. I've got Firefox, I've got Chrome, I've got Edge, I've got Inter Explorer, I've got them all. And depending on whatever nonsense they pull in that particular month and whatever updates they release, I will go and decide which browser I'm going to use, you know, depending on which one feels more safe and more secure that particular month. And it's also dependent on, you know, what I needed to do. Sometimes certain websites do not support certain browsers.

So the majority of websites these days you'll find support Firefox and Chrome because that's what most folks use. But there are a lot of other people that use other browsers like Safari and Opera and Edge and Chromium, if you know what that is. So if you happen to be one of those folks that uses one of those other browsers that I've mentioned, then there's a chance that these websites that you're trying to visit may or may not be supported on your particular browser. Depends on the web developer.

So in regards to these browsers, browser versions can vary quite widely. There's quite a few to choose from. And some websites, like I said, and some web applications are designed for specific browsers.

So if you go look at the average web developer, they normally go and design their websites for Chrome and Firefox. And depending on how much time and money and effort they're willing to put into this, they will potentially go and have it Develop for other browsers as well. What I have noticed is very few websites these days are actually supported by the old browsers like Internet Explorer and even Edge.

Edge is not at all different than a browser and yet very few websites are supported by it. It'll either not load at all or it's gonna load all crooked and skew. It's gonna look weird, you know So it's a bit of a problem. And lastly before we move on you may need to run more than one browser, such as myself, because sometimes the one browser, you know, doesn't want to load a certain website, or doesn't have a certain plugin, or an add-on installed, or you know, whatever, then you might need to switch over. And if you have more than one browser installed, like myself, it's going to help you out of that predicament.

Now, moving on to something called cookies. And no, you cannot eat these cookies. These are cookies that you would find on your device.

most commonly found on laptops and desktops, but you do find them on tablets and phones as well. So when you go online to websites, more specifically, a lot of these websites are going to want to store what we call cookies on your device. Now, it helps your device remember all kinds of things about this website. It helps them, you know, know certain things about your device. In both cases, this could be good and bad.

So storing cookies on your device is a bad thing because if... I, let's imagine for a moment I'm a hacker. If I'm a hacker and I know what I'm doing and I hack you and your device and I know where these cookies are, I can go and dig in these cookies, which are basically text files that contain your session information. It stores your session information. I can go there and I can find this text file on your machine or your device.

And I can get all kinds of information about your session, which includes things that are personally identifiable. This can be your passwords and usernames, names and last names, phone numbers, email addresses, you know, anything like that that's, well, sensitive in nature. So these cookies also contain other browser metadata.

So if you don't know what metadata is, I'm hoping I'm pronouncing that correctly. It's basically information about information. So it contains that. It obviously contains PII, like I just mentioned.

personally identifiable information and then it contains privacy and security issues whoo so what information is a site capturing that's the first thing you should go and ask yourself so if you are visiting a brand spanking new website not necessarily a scaly looking website it's just a new website there is a chance that this website might ask you do you want to allow this website to store information or cookies and most of us just click on yes I normally never click on yes I always click on decline or deny and sometimes when you click on that it'll still allow you to visit the website just fine like normal other times you'll find it as soon as you click on decline or deny it's going to refuse to load the website you will not be able to access this website until you accept the cookies now i'm really really not a fan of that because they're basically forcing these cookies down your throat they are saying we want to know who you are we want to know where you are and what device you've gotten all that kinds of stuff And I kind of personally feel this is an invasion of my privacy. Why do you need to know that about me? So a lot of websites these days will force you to accept cookies, failing which you will not be able to access that website.

So you're going to have to make that judgment call at that point in time. Are you willing to accept these cookies? You know, and then obviously in exchange, you may or may not be compromised.

So I suppose you can make a judgment call. If it's a well-known website, everybody visits it and you have not heard anything bad about it, then I suppose it's not too bad to go and do that. It's still dangerous though.

But if it's a website you've never heard of, I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't. Honestly, I would not.

So cookies cannot install malware, by the way, but they may be read by malware that has infected your computer. So if you've got some sort of malware infecting your computer, there is a chance that that malware will go and dig in your cookies, just like a hacker. And it will go and look for something sensitive in nature, like usernames and passwords.

Cookies can also be used to track browser history. So these cookies... will store where you've been, what you've done, what you've looked at, all that.

So if someone just wants to see where you've been and what you've looked at, they will go and use those cookies as well. So you'll find a lot of websites that want to store your cookies, not because they want to compromise you, but because they want to see where else you've been besides their website. This might be from a marketing perspective. If they see you've been on this shopping site or that shopping site and you've been looking at potential cars to buy or computers to buy and stuff, then they'll see.

Uh-huh. This person is in the market for a car because they've been looking at car websites Let's start showing this person ads about potential cars that's for sale So it's not necessarily harmful, but it is damn well annoying when they do that It's targeted ads is what they're doing and Facebook is one of the people that loves doing that They love capturing your information the background to see who you are where you are What you're looking at so they know what ads to present you because if they present the correct ads to you Chances are higher you're gonna click on it If you are going to click on it, they're going to make money out of it. Yeah, did you know that?

All right, and then we've got what is known as pop-up windows. Here's a bit of a picture for you guys. Definitely not my best work, but you would have all seen these at some point along the line.

So here you are browsing the internet, going onto a random website, and then suddenly these random annoying little windows start popping up. Those are pop-ups. You may or may not see them as ads in some cases. So sometimes they're small, sometimes they're big, sometimes they're ads, other times it's just little windows that keeps popping up on these websites.

These guys are known as pop-ups. Sometimes they are for good reasons, maybe you're about to download something and a little window pops up asking you do you want to download or not or whether you want to save it or what version you want and that's a good pop-up. Other times, which is quite frankly most of the time, you're going to get random annoying little windows popping up. Well, generally ads for the most part.

You know, hey, subscribe to this or hey, buy that. It's very annoying. So any window that a site creates is a pop-up for the most part.

Usually it's going to be ads. They might be generated from a script or by clicking on a link. Most of the time I've seen it's a script in the background. It's actually in the code of the website.

So the web developer probably embedded it in the code somewhere. I'm not saying that will always be the case, but from my experience, that's what I've seen. And then something you also should be aware of is if you randomly start having what we call spawning pop-ups, that could potentially indicate a malware infection. To give you an idea, one of my kids, I mean I've got lots of computers in my house, one of my kids he's got multiple browsers on his PC and I think if he specifically opens Google Chrome browser at the moment he's got these endless amount of ads that keeps popping up at the bottom right of his computer screen.

And even if he closes the Chrome browser they keep popping up non-stop, just continuously. So there's some sort of malware that got infected into his browser there, it's pop-up related, but only seems to be happening with Chrome browser. And it seems to be happening, you know, even with our closed Chrome browser.

I'm not bad-mouthing Chrome in any way. It just happens to be related to Chrome, this specific one. Other days, you'll see it's going to be related to Firefox. And that's the case. That happens to be the browser he was using when he got infected.

So now he's forced to use Firefox for the time being until daddy can go and have a look at it. So maybe after I create this video, then I'll quickly go and have a look and, you know, fix his machine for him. All right, moving on to disabling Autofill.

and clearing browser cache. If you don't know what autofill is, guys, if you go to a website and you wanna start filling information, this could be a username and a password, it could be a forum you've gotta complete, maybe you're about to subscribe to something or complete some sort of forum online where it would normally ask your name, your last name, your email address, potentially your phone number or residential address, maybe your payment details like your card and all that. When you are completing a form like that, you'll find that sometimes as you start typing, let's say in the name section, as soon as you start typing the first letter of your name, it's already going to start popping up of your name. It's going to give you a suggestion as you can actually just go and click on your name.

It's going to fill it in automatically for you. You can just press enter. So that's an example of autocomplete.

It can be very useful, very handy. It can really speed up the process when it comes to completing these forms, which is very annoying. But it's also very dangerous to do that. I definitely do not recommend that you go and have autofill in.

Mine is always turned off because that just means your browser is keeping more information about you, which very well will probably be private stuff you do not want it to keep. And you can also go and configure your browser to go and clear its cache automatically. So if you were to go and browse in what we call incognito mode, I'm probably butchering that, but that's for Chrome, and we are going to refer back to this later in this video. So if you go and browse in incognito mode in your...

in your Chrome browser, it doesn't store where you've been, doesn't store any information about you, very secure. And Firefox, I think it's called private browsing, if I'm not mistaking. And in the Explorer, it's called in-private browsing. I think in Edge it might be called the same thing.

All the browsers actually have this function, it's just a matter of it's being called something else. So it essentially forces the browser to browse in HTTPS, which is secure encrypted web browsing, doesn't store any cookies. Doesn't cache any websites, has no browser histories. If you're browsing something naughty, I'm not going to go into that topic, but if you're browsing something naughty, it will not keep track of where you have been. So if you go into your browser history afterwards, you'll see it doesn't have any clue where you've been.

So if you want to stay safe on the internet, that's the way to do it. Now, with regards to your normal web browsing experience, all web browsers somewhere along the line in their settings have an option for you to have the browser clear its cache automatically. when you are done. Now the cache is generally there to help speed up your browser experience and to basically cause your browser to use less data.

So if you visit a website for the first time, it's going to load everything for the first time because it has no cooking clue what the website looks like, it's going to download everything. But should you go and visit that same site later down the line, the same day or a couple days later, your browser is not going to go and re-download the whole website, it's simply going to go and download what has changed since the last time you visited this website. Everything else that has not changed is actually stored in your browser's cache, which gives you a faster browsing experience, kind of gives you the illusion that you've got a fast internet connection, even though you don't. It's simply because it's loading most of it from your browser's temporary memory, if you will.

So it gives you the illusion of a fast internet connection. It also saves you data. So if you are on a limited data plan where you're paying by the megabyte and you don't have unlimited data, This is actually going to help you in that sense because it's only going to load what is new, not the whole freaking website. It does come with a couple of drawbacks, as you can imagine, because when it stores a browser cache, it tracks where you've been.

People can, you know, if they hack your machine, they can see where you've been. It may or may not contain sensitive information. So it's a coin torch. You're going to have to decide which one is better for you. Do you want the browser to store your website history, your browsing history, because it's going to save you...

Data and you know, it's gonna give you faster browser experience. Maybe that's what you want Maybe whatever you're browsing is not that sensitive and secure So it doesn't really matter in your case But if you're browsing websites and what you work with is very sensitive in nature I am gonna recommend to you that you do not have the browser cache your details. Instead, have the browser clear the cache automatically, or you can go and do it manually. It's a lot of work to do this manually. Unfortunately, half the time we're going to forget, but you can go about it that way if you need to.

All right, and then what I also want to say regarding this disabling autofill and clearing your browser cache, just in case I haven't said it already, browser records history of pages you visited. That I think I did say to you guys. So just a couple of notes.

Your browser is going to record the history of pages you visited. It can store passwords and information that you type into forums. Could be beneficial, could be handy, but it can also be risky. It can delete any of it using browser settings.

So that's what I referred to earlier when I said you can go to any browser settings and you can have it clear its browser cache automatically as soon as you click on the cross button at the top right where it just closes the browser, closes your session. And then what I also mentioned to you guys is if you go into your private or incognito mode, that disables the storage of what sites you visited, cookies. All right, guys.

And then there is something I want to talk to you guys about before we move into Unit 4. Types of firewalls. So first of all, if you're brand spanking new to firewalls, it's not a wall that's been lit on fire. No.

This is a term we use. It's a layer of protection that we have in the IT world. So this firewall could be software based, it can be hardware based.

So you get software based firewalls, these are softwares you have pre-installed in your windows. So windows has actually got something called Defender on windows 10 and 11. It's pre-installed, it's part of the operating system, it's actually built in firewall. It's not the best, it's free, what do you expect if something is for free, but it's still better than having no firewall.

Now you can at your discretion go and download and install other third-party firewalls. They most likely will cost you money in most cases. And then you also have what we call a network or a hardware-based firewall. Not all firewalls are software you're going to go and install your machine, guys.

Some firewalls are actually located in something like a server room. At first glance, they will actually look like a router or a switch or something. So there's a bit of a picture for you guys. You can see what it looks like. That is an example of a firewall.

you get many brands so this one is called Sophos it used to be called Cybrum back in the day I'm not promoting or demoting any brands here just in case you're wondering I get no kickback out of this basically so that is a brand now in each brand you get different models of different functions and different features depending on what functions and features it has and how many users it can handle how much traffic you can handle that'll dictate the price these firewalls guys are very very very expensive in most cases But the amount of things they can do is way more than just blocking and allowing ports and services of IP addresses on websites. Way, way, way more than that. It's got its whole own operating system for crying out loud.

So, you know, besides just logging into this device like other network devices, you actually need to know the coding behind. You actually need to know how this device works. You're going to have to actually attend courses in most cases, unless you are lucky enough to be able to shadow someone for an extended period of time. But generally, it involves attending a course, quite frankly, multiple courses, and even then, you still won't know exactly how this device works. It's going to take time, like anything in IT.

It always takes time. Just because you don't know how something works, there's nothing wrong with that, guys. It takes time. We all went for the exact same thing. All right, folks, so that is Unit 3. Moving on to Unit 4 in this module, using shared storage.

Okay, folks, like usual, first topic in this unit, network. printer sharing. So the first thing I'm going to mention under this topic is sharing the printer via Windows.

This is more applicable to a home environment or a very small office home office environment. So if you have a home environment where you've got multiple computers and there's multiple people and you only have something like one printer and everybody's going to print through the same printer this will apply. Or if you've got a small office home office environment a very small business Let's say somewhere between five people and maybe 50 people.

And in this small business, there's only like one or two people that's actually got a printer. Now this one or two people that's got a printer, it's probably those cheap kind of printers, the cheaper kind that you would find on their desk. Now what about the other people in that building that don't have a printer, but also want to print and need to print from time to time?

I think for the purpose of this demonstration, let's say it's 20 people. and only one person out of these 20 people in that building has a printer. So I'm going to use that for the purpose of this demonstration.

Now the other 19 people in that office, when they need to print, if they need to print, they will probably have to go and put the document on a flash drive, a USB stick, or an external drive, maybe share it via the network, assuming they're on the same network, or even potentially email it to the person that's got a printer. Now you've got to go to that person and ask them very nicely, sir, ma'am, would you mind printing my document? Now they might not want to print it and even if they want to they might not be able to print it because maybe they're busy Obviously these guys are also working. They've got things they need to do. So it's it's a problem.

So what if That printer which is now connected to that person's pc What if it could be shared on the network so you can share any locally installed printer on the network guys? A printer can be connected, you know, via any means, you know, to that person's machine. It can be connected via USB cable, which is less popular these days.

It can be via Bluetooth, via Ethernet, so that's a network cable, probably a LAN cable. Or it can be via Wi-Fi, which is actually becoming more and more popular by the day. The point here is that one and only printer is connected to that one and only person's PC.

We can call this person George for the purpose of this demonstration. I'm literally just making it up as I'm going along. So George is the only person that's got this printer installed and that printer is installed via one of the ways I've just listed. Doesn't matter which way. Now once that printer is connected to that person's PC and once it's installed and all the drivers are installed and all that, he or she has the ability to go to their printers on their machine, right click on it and go and share the printer on the network.

So what's going to happen then is any other person on that same network, if they go type in George's computer's name, or George's computer's IP address, they will then see that printer listed amongst his shared folders and they will be able to either double click on it or right click on it and click on connect. That will allow them to print through George's printer. So George's computer is going to basically act like a middleman and whenever someone clicks on print, it'll list all the prints that got installed including George's printer which is shared on the network and they can click on George's printer and it'll actually print through George's computer. to his printer. Now there's a catch to this.

I mean this sounds all too good to be true because it is. The catch is the Windows host, so that's the PC where it's installed on, the PC where this printer is installed, that Windows host, it must be switched on for the shared printer to be accessible. So if George happens to not be at the office, let's say he turned his machine off, he went to work from home, now that's going to be a problem because when we try and print, even though it needs to go through George's computer, And even though George might have even left his computer in the office, it's not going to work. Because George's computer has to be turned on. It's not turned on, it's not going to work.

A quick easy workaround, you know, regarding that issue would be just to turn his PC on. You do not need to know George's password. You don't even need to log on.

You just press the power button, let it idle on the password screen. That's good enough. Because what is known as the print spooler will be running in the background now. And you'd actually still be able to print then.

As soon as you're done printing, you just turn the PC off again, and there you go. Now, in case you're wondering how this all works and looks, I've got a couple of things open in the background. So it just so happens that I've got a printer installed on this machine I'm on today.

So I'm going to switch over. Let me quickly switch over for you guys. A few moments later.

All right, guys, so there is an example of my control panel on this machine I'm using today to make this video. All of those are things that comes with my Windows, so you can ignore the four... printer thingy my bob's here on the right the one i want to draw your attention to is the one way on the left the one that looks like it's kind of transparent the reason why it's transparent because it's currently turned off it's not turned on because i'm not printing anything at this point in time so i'm just wasting electricity so if i want to share that printer all i need to do is i just go here right click on it i go to printer properties and then you'll see a menu of sorts Now I can't tell you exactly what the menu will look like because it does vary from time to time from printer brand to printer brand and from printer model to printer model.

But somewhere it will be labeled very clearly normally where it says sharing. So in my case, it's a tab. And then here you'll have the ability to go and actually share the printer in question.

So you go here to the bottom, you can see mine says share this printer. Normally it will have the printer's name. So in my case, you can see what the name would have been here. That's the name that was typed in here. So what you would do is you can go and leave it on the default name, which is what most people do.

But if you've got a decent sized company with multiple people, it's got printers shared on network, you might want to give this a proper professional name to help you and other users identify whose printer this is and where it is. So this printer is, for example, located in reception. You might want to go and call it reception printer. Then at least people will know where the heck this printer is and where they need to go and collect their print job. So all I need to do here is I just need to click on apply and okay.

But before I do that, I want to show you what it looks like currently when someone runs a search for my computer's name or my computer's IP address on a network. So I'm going to quickly show you guys in just one second. I'm not going to click on apply yet.

So let me switch over to what it looks like when people run a search for my PC. Alright folks, so currently that is what it looks like when people run a search for my computer's name or its IP address on the network. You can see I ran a search for the IP address.

So at the moment, that's all the folders and blah, blah, blah that's shared on my machine. And even if I go and right click here and I click on refresh, it doesn't show any printer. Now ideally, once that printer is shared, it's going to reflect here and people will either be able to double click on it or right click and click on connect.

So let me go and quickly share that printer. Alright, here we are. It's clicked.

You can see it's selected. I'm going to click on apply. Give it a second and there we go.

It's done. I'm just going to click on OK. Let's just switch back over to that folder. Now the moment it doesn't show yet. So I'm going to just quickly right click here and click on refresh.

Here we go. So you can see there's the printer I was looking for. So it says Burning Ice Tech Printer.

That's the name I typed in. And now from the user's perspective that wants to print through my computer, all they need to do is just literally double click on this printer. right click on it and click on connect from that point forward my printer will actually in fact be listed under their list of printers And they can just go ahead and print on it assuming of course my machine is turned on and it's as easy as that folks Alright next up.

We've got the topic of joining a workgroup or joining a domain And for those of you that don't know this already yet when you've just installed Windows 10 or 11 That machine is actually already on a workgroup and that workgroup's name is well workgroup there's a picture for you guys on the right so if you look towards the bottom in the middle you'll see there's a section that says workgroup and behold what is it called it is called workgroup now you do have the ability to go and join your machine or a user's machine to another workgroup should you desire to do that normally if we want to be on the same workgroup we don't normally go and join another workgroup we just leave everybody on the same default workgroup if you will Alternatively, you can also go and join a domain environment. Both of these, workgroup and domain, each have their own benefits. And as you can imagine, they each have their own drawbacks. If you look at a workgroup environment, very easy to manage, very easy to join. I mean, you're probably already on one.

A couple of drawbacks is from a management perspective, you don't have a lot of control and you have little to no security. If you look at domains, you've got a lot of control and a lot of security, but when it comes to managing it, it's a little bit more complex. So Windows does provide all the client and server software required for you to be able to join a domain, but you do need to be on the same network normally as your domain controller.

And normally on that note, you actually need a domain controller. So you're going to need some sort of server. so yeah when it comes to work groups and domains which one is better well i suppose that depends on your perspective but in my opinion i will probably be a domain because i like to have control over my network i like to have security in my network but there are times when well a work group environment sometimes is better alright folks and then when it comes to actually browsing your network shares and your drives i'm sure you've all done this you might just not have noticed you've done this So it all depends on your experience. So when it comes to browsing your network shares, there's a couple of pictures for you guys there on the right.

So I mean, obviously that's going to come down to you just clicking on network. That's one way to go and do it. Alternatively, you can go to your search bar, which is called Cortana.

Go type in backslash, backslash, and you can go and type in a computer or a machine's name or its IP address. But generally, the quickest and the easiest way to browse your network to see which other devices are on your network This is assuming you're using no fancy software, you're just using normal Explorer, would be to go and click on the network section in your Explorer. And then you'll be able to see what machines on your network, and if they have something shared, you can go and double click on that machine and you'll be able to see what they've got shared.

So using your Explorer, you can go and view computers, printers, routers, which is obviously going to include network infrastructure and other devices via your network object. And when it comes to the actual... paths of finding these things.

Some of us call this the breadcrumb, not what they call it in this course, but in real life, we just call it the breadcrumb. So if you look in the bottom picture there at the top where it's highlighted in blue, that is the path that you would need to follow to get to that specific destination. I just call that the breadcrumb.

Now, folks, still on the topic of browsing network shares and drives, something you can go and do. This is not always needed, but this is. something you can go and do if needed. If you happen to be on a network that's got other computers or more specifically servers on that network and on that server or those computers there's a folder that may or may not be shared, you can in fact go to that computer or that server on the network of course and you can go and map that folder as a shared drive or as a map drive.

Now, what this course doesn't cover, but it's also actually possible, you can actually go and map a whole freaking hard drive if need be. So, if there's a server or a computer network, on that server or computer, a whole hard drive has been shared, which is extremely rare. You can actually, in fact, go and map that whole freaking hard drive.

Now, normally, it's just going to be one or more folders that's going to be shared on that machine. And instead of you going to search or wherever and typing in that computer or that server's name and IP address, I mean, you might know how to do it, but it's... very inconvenient. It's very time consuming. So even if you are lucky enough to know how to go and do it, who wants to go and do that every time?

So if there's a server on my network that I need to access very regularly to go and store data or retrieve data, I don't want to have to go and type in the name or the IP address the whole time. So what if I could go to that machine, map that folder that's shared as a drive, and then when I go to my computer, I can just see an extra hard drive. It looks like an extra hard drive. The icon looks slightly different. So if you look at the picture on the left, you'll see there's a picture of a hard drive there.

It looks like a hard drive, but it's got like a little green pipe kind of thing going out of it. That is what it would look like. So it's going to look like a hard drive, except you're going to have this little pipe icon in front of it, which indicates it's a map drive. Might look like a hard drive, might behave like a hard drive. You might even access it like a hard drive, but believe it or not, that is not on your computer.

It's on the network somewhere. Right, moving on to a slightly different topic. backups. Now guys, backups in IT is probably easily one of the most important things you'll ever do. You can never have too many backups.

So do a backup, do another backup, and then do another backup just to be safe. So this could be for data files that needs to be backed up. Most commonly when we do a backup, it's to go and backup data files on your own machine, on a client's machine, or a server of some kind. So backups, yes, most commonly used to go and backup data files.

But you can also go and use backups to go and backup things like system configuration. Not necessarily data. A very good example would actually be a built-in system function on your computer called System Restore. Now, unfortunately, this awesome function is only available on the client operating systems.

So if you go and use something like Windows 10 or Windows 11, yes, you'll have access to this great function called System Restore. Were you to go and use a server operating system? No.

You're going to have to go and use something else, some sort of backup. So system restore is basically like a time machine. You can send your machine or the user's machine to an earlier point in time.

It's like a backup. You're sending it back in time. However, it's only going to influence the system. Any things you've installed or uninstalled will be changed back.

Any system changes, configurations, all of that will be changed back to that earlier point in time to when this checkpoint was made. Now, unfortunately, it does not. influence your data.

What I'm saying, unfortunately, but sometimes we don't want it to influence our data. Now, a couple of considerations with your backups in general. This is obviously more applicable to your data kind of backups, but let's just say backups in general. Do you want to use on-site or do you want to use off-site backups? My suggestion to you guys would be, if at all possible, use both.

So normally you want to get yourself a daily backup. So that backup takes place every day. You want to get yourself.

a weekly backup, happens once a week, possibly on a Friday, and you want to get yourself a monthly backup, also probably on the last Friday of a month. So you've got daily, weekly, and monthly. So depending on when this issue occurs, you know, whatever potential issue you may or may not encounter, you will go and use the relevant backups to go and restore back to an exact point in time.

Now, what if you've got some sort of issue that happens, let's say, It's a ransomware attack and it encrypts all your backups daily, weekly and monthly because that's quite often what happens. Ransomwares, they know that the average company does backups and they kind of lie on the system dormant, normally for a month or two. They crawl into your backups, they encrypt your backups.

Now your daily, weekly and monthly backups are rendered useless. What then? Then you would resort to what we call your offsite backups.

It's a backup you make, but this is stored. off-site, not necessarily off-site off-site, but it's not plugged in. So God forbid, if something happens to your backups, digitally speaking, you can just go and get this off-site backup, which might legitimately be off-site, or it might just be locked in a physical safe somewhere or a cabinet.

You plug that sucker in and there you go. You can go recover from that instead. Other considerations guys is backup media security.

So when you've made these backups, where are they stored? How are they stored? So if you look at your daily, weekly and monthly backups, are they plugged in? Because if they are, from a digital perspective, that is not very secure because if you have something like a ransomware attack, it's not going to end well.

If it is a offsite backup, supposedly that's not plugged in, that happens to still be on site. Where is it? Is it stored safely in a locked safe somewhere? And if at all possible, you should actually have an offsite backup which legitimately is offsite, which people just don't have access to.

It's not just because we don't want them compromising their backups. Sometimes the information on these backups, guys, are very sensitive. It might be trade secrets for all we know.

So we really don't want this information getting into the wrong hands. Then you've got point-in-time backups, which I actually did kind of discuss. I did mention earlier that the kind of backups you would normally do is a daily, a weekly, and a monthly backup. So depending on when exactly this issue happened, if it happened, let's say 10 days ago, I'm going to go and use a weekly backup combined with three daily backups, not necessarily a whole monthly backup.

So that's to get you to an exact point in time so that you lose absolutely minimal data. The closer you can get your users and your customers to where they were when this issue happened, the better. We want them to lose either no data or absolutely nothing.

minimal data. Then guys, backup schedule. We kind of did cover that. I mean, like I said, daily, weekly, monthly backups, and obviously your offsite backups. Do as many backups as you possibly can and try and automate the procedure as many times as you possibly can.

But even though you do do these backups and even though you do automate these backups, I'm going to suggest you also test these backups. It's not actually part of this course, but it doesn't help you've got all these wonderful backups, but you don't actually taste them. So you need to go and basically simulate a failure at least once a month, grab yourself a blank server or whatever it is that you're backing up, and try and see if you can actually recover using your backups. It's not just to test the backups. It's actually to go and check how long these backups take, you know, to go and restore from.

So if and when you eventually need to go and do this for real one day, then at least when the customer or the users ask you, how much longer? Then you can at least give them a time frame, an ETA as to how long this is going to take. Right guys and still kind of sort of on the topic of backup. This is going to be the last topic for this specific unit. Backup storage types.

So the kind of way we can go about storing our backups. We're not talking about how often we do it you know daily weekly monthly that kind of stuff. We're talking about where one might possibly store these backups. So that could potentially be locally attached storage.

So that could be, you know, your internal hard drive, but it's probably going to be an external hard drive, a flash drive, you know, that kind of stuff. So it is something that is close by, something you could potentially plug directly into your machine or your server. Then we have network attached storage, which is often referred to as a NAS drive.

You actually get NAS machines and they take normal computer hard drives. And these machines, you literally just plug a power cable into it and an inter-cable into it. You can actually find it on a network using its IP address.

And when you connect to that machine using your computer, you would never even know that it's not a computer in some cases. It would literally just look like a folder on the network, like someone sharing a folder, and you can go and dump stuff in it. So that's another form or way for you to go and backup stuff. And I actually often use those at small to medium-sized companies.

Then something that's becoming more and more popular by the day is cloud-based backups. Offsite is not something new. You can see they mention offsite and cloud-based there.

So I suppose cloud-based is technically offsite, but offsite could legitimately just be offsite, not online necessarily. It could be that a backup was made, it was taken physically someplace offsite to an undisclosed location, or it could be that it's offsite in the sense of it's online somewhere on someone else's server. So that could be, it's, I don't know, it's a two-sided coin.

It can mean two things. Then you can actually go and use multiple methods for comprehensive backups. So you can go and use local storage for regular point-in-time backups.

Remember, we just discussed earlier what point-in-time is. And you can also go and make use of cloud storage product off-site backups, if need be. Now, guys, before we move on to the next unit, which is going to be the last unit, there's a bit of a game I like to play in these videos. Depending on how many of my other videos you've watched, you may already know what the game is. So normally some point in the video, normally towards the end of the video, there's a secret phrase or a word that I would give.

And then the idea of this game, should you want to play it, is for you to go to the comment section down below and use the word as is or to go and make some sort of creative sentence using this word. I would actually encourage you to have fun of it and make some sort of sentence using this specific word and then the idea here is if anyone is just randomly scrolling through the comment section they're going to be completely clueless. They're going to wonder what the heck is going on?

Why is everybody talking about this topic? You know what's going on? And only after they've watched the video and only assuming they've watched it this far would they know what the heck is going on.

Now you can still go and post your normal comments down below if you want to. So if you've got questions or anything else, that's fine. You can still go and post that down below. But for those of you that want to play the game, please use the word backup. Yeah, that's right.

I'm going to use the word backup. So normally I go and use a random ridiculous word, but I think today, considering we just spoke about backups, let's use the word backup. So you can either go and type the word backup in the comment section down below, or you can go and make some sort of creative sentence using the word backup.

Guys, please stick to YouTube rules. Don't go swearing. Don't go and do something that's against YouTube policies.

So keep it clean. Use a creative sentence of the word backup. And let's have some fun of this. All right, guys. So on that note, let's move on to the last unit in this module, which is unit five using mobile devices.

So when it comes to using your average mobile device these days, pretty much all of them you would have noticed are touchscreen these days. So if you want to go and interact with it, you're going to have to go and use some sort of gesture-based interaction. So you're going to have to go and slide your finger across the screen of this device.

You're going to have to pinch or spread your fingers across, you know, to zoom in and out. You know, that's basically an example of gesture-based interaction. So there's a bit of a picture for you guys of what it may or may not look like.

So there's many kinds of gestures you can do nowadays. And the scary thing is, I know it's a bit off topic, the pace at which kids can figure this out. Have you guys seen the rate at which kids can figure out smart devices these days? I mean, give a brand new phone or a tablet to a kid that's never seen one before.

This can be like a one-year-old, and I guarantee you, they'll probably figure that device out quicker than we adults can do it. It's just wow. It's amazing how kids are these days. Then something else that's also quite common on the average device is kinetics and screen orientation. You'll have a very hard time these days finding some sort of tablet or phone that does not have kinetics and screen orientation.

Now screen orientation is probably the more obvious one out of the two. So this is sometimes known as gyroscope on the phone or the tablet. So that comes down to if you rotate your phone, the screen will rotate with it, assuming you've turned this on.

It's normally turned on by default. Kinetics means your phone has the ability to sense, well, basically G-force. If I have to put this in simple terms, G-force.

If you shake your phone, it'll notice that it's being shaked. If you suddenly come to a grinding halt, whether you're walking, running, or driving around, the phone can sense that. It's kinetics.

That is how your insurance company will know that you've been in a car accident. Never mind your signal just coming down, like coming to a standstill. Your phone has got signals or sensors in it that can sense this kind of stuff. That's assuming you've got this kind of thing with your insurance company.

Now, what a lot of phones and devices have these days as well, which is not something we use that often, is speech recognition and hands-free. I think hands-free is probably the more common one. So the most common place you'll find folks using hands-free is probably in their cars.

It's not the only place. I've seen people walk around with them all the time in business meetings and in malls and stuff. But cars is the most common place I've seen people use hands-free.

So you've got both your hands on the steering. You've got your eyes on the road. And you've got your phone next to you, probably plugged into your console somehow.

And you can listen to the person on the other end via some earpiece or via your car's audio system in most cases. So it's just all around more safe instead of you having one of your hands occupied holding your phone. Speech recognition, well that means it recognizes your voice.

It's actually more common to find phones these days of face recognition, never mind speech recognition, but it's not actually a topic here right now. Anyway, if you guys are wondering what the speech recognition looks like, there's a bit of a picture for you guys, not the world's best picture, but in essence that's speech recognition. It will recognize you, it'll detect okay you are who you claim to be, it's going to listen to your commands, you can go and speak to your phone.

You'll find a lot of phones have got some sort of AI built into these days where you can talk to it. And there's an example of an average everyday hands-free system that you would find in a car, which allows you to drive safely. It may or may not be an earpiece. Potentially you might just hear the audio through your car's sound system, you know. All right guys, and then we've got passcode locks.

Something all phones and tablets seem to come out with these days. So generally if you leave your phone inactive for about 30 seconds, it's only 30 to 60 seconds. I've seen it's about 30 seconds on average.

The phone screen would turn off and very often it would lock. I think about nine out of ten times the phone would actually lock, assuming you've got some sort of lock on it. Normally, this is actually enabled by default.

If you want to use the phone again after 30 seconds of inactivity, you're going to have to turn the screen on and unlock the screen. Now, unlocking the screen can be many things, can be done in multiple ways. So it could be to authenticate using some sort of pin or a pattern code or biometric. I have seen people use a pin, but it's actually more common to see someone draw some sort of pattern on the screen or use a fingerprint, you know, on the side or the back of the phone in some sort of manner or in the front of the screen these days to actually unlock the phone. Then we've got lockout policy, also generally found on most mobile devices by default.

And strangely, laptops and desktop computers don't actually have this by default. You can go and put it there. A company can go and put it there, but normally they don't. A lot of companies, surprisingly, do not have this in place by default on the computer.

If you don't know what it is, if you get the code or the password or whatever it is to unlock this device wrong three times in a row, it would normally lock itself or at the very least time out. And after it's timed out, you know, once the timeout timer is over and you get it wrong again, it'll just time out again, you know, and again and again. And very often you'll find that it's going to subsequently get longer and longer the waiting period.

So the first time might have been 10 minutes. If you get the password wrong a fourth time, it's going to be 20 minutes and so on and so forth. Now, laptops and desktop computers, like I said, by default, they don't actually have a lockout policy.

It's up to you or the administrator to go put that in place. And it's scary to know that a lot of companies don't actually have this in place. Last thing I want to mention, guys, in regards to locks and all that with your phones, you can actually go and do something called remote wiping of data and settings.

Now, I've seen CompTIA loves for people to believe that when someone's phone is stolen, one of the answers would be remote wiping. And if you go write the exam, this is a question exam. And one of the answers is if someone's phone is stolen, you can go use remote wiping to wipe that device. Now, that's an answer in the exam, but I can tell you now, in real life, that doesn't actually work. In real life, remote wiping is used for a misplaced phone, yes, when it works, or if someone no longer works for the company and that device they used belongs to them themselves.

It was their property. Now, in that situation, the company might feel that they have sensitive information on that device, which the company doesn't want them to have because it's maybe trade secret. In that situation, you can go and enforce remote wiping and it'll actually work. What if it's just been misplaced? But if you're going to go and try and use remote wiping on a device that's been stolen, more than 95% of the time, it will not work.

The first thing criminals do when they steal a mobile device is they turn it off and they take the SIM card out, which means this device cannot receive the instruction that says, wipe yourself. So if it's not on some sort of mobile network or Wi-Fi network of some kind, it cannot... actually receive the instruction from you or the administrator that says wipe yourself.

So in real life that doesn't actually work but nonetheless it's still an answer in the exam. All right moving on to mobile applications and app stores. So you probably know what I mean by this. These are applications and games and that kinds of stuff that you would install on your phone or your tablet.

More specifically where you would get these applications and games for your phone and tablet. Now obviously we know you get many brands of phones and these different brands have got different operating systems. So depending on the brand of device you've got, more specifically depending on the operating system on that device you've got, that will dictate what kind of app stores you've got to disposal and that'll dictate what kind of apps you can use and whether they're compatible or not. So apps are platform specific. Some of these apps might only work on a phone or a tablet.

And some stores, you know, you can only find on certain phones. I've found that some phones like, you know, Apple, they're kind of locked. You can only use one store and that's it.

It's either their way or the highway. If we go look at Android, which is Google's operating system, there you can use their store or other stores. So looking at the stores, since we're talking about that, if we look at iOS, that's Apple's operating system, it is restricted to Apple's store. So if you go look on your iPhone or something like that, you've got to use their store.

No ifs or buts about it. You've got to use their store and that's it. It's tough bananas. If you go look at Android, that is Google's operating system. So that supports third-party stores and downlight sites.

So if you look at Android, most of us will probably go and use the store that's on your phone or tablet by default. That's going to be the Play Store. But there's no rule with Android that says you've got to use that store. At your discretion, you can go and use third-party stores.

You can go use download sites. I do not recommend it because they are very dangerous. The Play Store is probably going to be the most safest option for you.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying the Play Store is safe, guys. Absolutely not.

It's just out of all the options you've got available, the Play Store is probably going to be the safest one. Now, if you're going to go download a very well-known game or app, you should probably be fine. The problem comes in when we start downloading these games and applications you've never heard of before.

That is a problem. Now, you might say, hey, I'm just going to go look at the reviews and the comments. Did you know you can actually go and review your own app or game? Did you know you can comment on it? And did you know any willy-nilly can go and upload something to the Play Store?

So all I need to do is upload some game or app and say, wow, great Apple game, best I've ever seen. And you're going to go and download it now thinking, wow, yeah, the comments look wonderful. Meanwhile, it's all fake.

So unless it's something you've seen or heard of before and you know other people are using it, I would not recommend downloading some random Apple game. There's a lot of malware on the Play Store, guys. Any willy-nilly can go and upload something there.

All right, and then moving on to the last topic in this unit and for this module. network connectivity. Now once we finish this topic guys don't disappear on me yet. I just want to do a quick shout out and all that in the video so it'll be nice if you listen to that as well. But anyway so with regards to network connectivity that comes down to how you connect your phone and tablet you know the different kind of connection options you've got.

So obviously we've got mobile data access that's probably the most common one that all of us use. You'll be on your normal mobile network with your SIM card, you can make phone calls and receive SMS's. or send SMSs and better yet you can go and browse the internet and that kind of stuff.

All using your mobile data or your mobile network. And what you can also go and use, which is the secondary option for most of us, but whenever we can we normally like to use this because it's cheaper, is Wi-Fi. All devices these days have the ability for you to go and connect to some sort of wireless connection and normally we like to do that. That's actually our preference because you know data is quite often expensive in some countries.

So if you're on a Wi-Fi connection whenever we can. we normally go and connect to it. Lastly guys, airplane mode. What is that?

Now when you put your device, your phone or tablet into airplane mode, you'll notice it turns off all forms of wireless communication. This is Bluetooth, NFC, your normal Wi-Fi, anything and everything when it comes to wireless on that device has been turned off. Because there's a myth going around that when you have something like a phone or a tablet on the plane and you know these wireless signals are turned on.

that supposedly it can crash the plane or influence the instruments. This has never really been proven as far as I know. So if anyone knows a little bit more about this, feel free to lean in on this in the comment section down below. But as far as I know, this has never actually been proven. So it's more of a myth at this point in time.

But yeah, ideally, if you are going to be on a plane, you want to put your phone onto airplane mode and then all these signals are turned off and then it's deemed harmless. Now, the way I see it, you know, is you might as well just turn your phone off, because normally when we are on our phones, it's because we want to do something on it, like, you know, on the internet, or, you know, watch TikTok, or whatever. So, the only things you can do on your phone, you know, when it's in airplane mode, is to play an offline game, or go through your offline pictures and videos, which is not something we do that often.

So, yeah. Anyway, guys, that brings us to the end of this unit, and to the end of this module. There's one more module left after this one, then we would actually have covered. everything in this course.

And after that module, I'm going to give you guys one or two, maybe even more dedicated videos with practice questions for the exam. So those practice questions will cover you on the exact same stuff the exam will cover you. It will test you on the same stuff, measure you on the same skills. And if you can do those practice questions, then you should generally be okay for the exam as well.

So that's going to be after module five. So first, there's going to be one more video after this, which is going to be module five. And that will be followed by the practice questions videos. Right, guys, if you have not done it already, give your homie a like.

I mean, I do put a lot of effort into these videos. They take a lot of time to make. So please do that. And if you would like to know when Module 5 comes out or those practice questions videos or any of my other videos, then maybe consider subscribing. Otherwise, you might miss it.

And then, guys, before we disappear, I'd like to give a shout out and a thank you to everybody that's sponsoring this channel. So for those of you that click on the thanks button below the video, I know it's not always available. It depends on the video and the country.

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I appreciate all of you guys. Here's a list of the PayPal supporters. Thank you very much, guys. I appreciate all of you. And then guys, in case you don't know, at the very, very bottom of the video description, you will find a link to my Discord server.

It's called Free IT Training. Completely optional, but if you have Discord and you know what Discord is, feel free to go check out that Discord server. The last time I checked, it had more than a thousand people in it. It's probably more by now.

These are all students or people like yourself studying courses like this one and other courses. So I'm in that server. Lots of other people studying this course and other courses are in that service.

If you've got a question about this course and your other course, or if you're struggling, or you just want to go and study with other people that's studying for the same course, you can find all of that there. There's lots of study groups. If you happen to know something that someone else does not, then you can also lean in and help that person. All in all, a community of IT people of like-minded people.

Alright folks, and that brings us to the end of this video. I shall see you all in module 5 of the CompTIA IT Fundamentals course, or should I say ITF Plus course.