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Wifi vs. Ethernet: Unraveling the Internet Connection Mystery

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In today’s interconnected world, the internet has become an indispensable part of our lives. Whether it’s browsing the web, streaming videos, or playing online games, we rely on a stable and fast internet connection. But have you ever wondered how this magical connection works? In this blog, we’ll explore the two primary methods of connecting to the internet: WiFi and Ethernet. We’ll break down their differences, benefits, and how they operate to keep us seamlessly connected to the online world.

  1. WiFi: The Wireless Wonder WiFi, short for “Wireless Fidelity,” is a technology that allows devices to connect to the internet without physical cables. It enables devices like smartphones, laptops, and tablets to access the internet over the airwaves. Here’s how WiFi works:
  • Wireless Signals: WiFi works by transmitting data as radio signals. Your WiFi router serves as the central hub, converting the internet data from your Internet Service Provider (ISP) into radio signals.
  • WiFi-enabled Devices: Devices like smartphones and laptops have built-in WiFi receivers that can pick up these radio signals from the router.
  • Router to Device Communication: The router and your device communicate wirelessly, sending and receiving data packets. These data packets contain the information required to access websites, send messages, or stream videos.

Advantages of WiFi:

  • Mobility: With WiFi, you can move around freely within the range of your router, making it convenient to use your devices anywhere in your home.
  • Ease of Setup: Setting up a WiFi connection is relatively simple and requires no physical cables.

Disadvantages of WiFi:

  • Interference and Signal Loss: WiFi signals can be affected by physical obstacles like walls, furniture, and other electronic devices. Interference from neighboring WiFi networks or other wireless devices can also degrade the signal quality, leading to slow speeds or connection drops.
  • Bandwidth Sharing: WiFi networks are typically shared among multiple devices, which can lead to reduced speeds during peak usage times. If many devices are connected simultaneously and consuming data-intensive content, it can lead to a slowdown in the network. Think of Wifi like a hot potato. Each device gets the potato for a split second and then it’s the next device’s turn.

Ease of Setup: Setting up a WiFi connection is relatively simple and requires no physical cables.

  1. Ethernet: The Reliable Connection Ethernet, on the other hand, refers to a wired connection that involves using cables to connect to the internet. It has been around for much longer than WiFi and remains a trusted method for reliable internet access. Here’s how Ethernet works:
  • Wired Connections: In an Ethernet setup, you use an Ethernet cable to physically connect your device (e.g., computer or gaming console) to the modem or router provided by your ISP.
  • Data Transmission: The Ethernet cable acts as a conduit for data transmission. It sends and receives data packets containing the information necessary for online activities.
  • Stability and Speed: Ethernet connections are known for their stability and faster data transfer speeds compared to WiFi. Since the connection is direct and not subject to wireless interference, it often provides a more consistent and reliable experience.

Advantages of Ethernet:

  • Reliability: Ethernet connections are less prone to interference and provide a stable connection, making them ideal for tasks that require high bandwidth, like online gaming and video streaming.
  • Consistent Speeds: Unlike WiFi, which can experience fluctuations in speed due to signal strength, Ethernet typically maintains a more consistent data transfer rate.

Disadvantages of Ethernet:

To be fair, there are some disadvantages with ethernet…

  • Limited Reach: Ethernet connections are typically limited to a certain distance (usually 100 meters or 328 feet) from the network switch or router. Extending the network beyond this range might necessitate additional hardware like repeaters or switches.
  • Limited Mobility: The primary disadvantage of Ethernet is its lack of mobility compared to wireless technologies like WiFi. Since Ethernet connections require physical cables, devices must be directly connected to the network infrastructure, limiting the mobility of devices like laptops, smartphones, and tablets.

To summarize, if you’re looking for faster internet and networking speeds, your answer is to run some network line. Shameless self promotion –Need some network line run or a network installed? Give me a call at 765.293.9744. – Bryan Lloyd

10 Ways You Can Use Technology to Combat Attention Deficit Disorder

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I am currently 38 years old. I was diagnosed with ADD in 2nd grade. My parents started me on Ritalin and that definitely helped. But even then I hated the idea of being controlled by a substance. So when I started my Freshmen year in college, I decided that I was going to do everything in my power to survive with out medication. Since then, I tried going back on medication for one month and actually found it to be counter-productive. Don’t get me wrong, medication can help. But I think you can also use technology to help. I list 10 ways I’ve used technology to help my ADD.

  1. Todoist – Todoist is a very robust todo list.
  2. iOS shortcuts – I use iOS shortcuts all the time and I pair them with automation. Here’s a couple of ideas:
    • Logging Coffee
    • Logging Water
    • Recording my weight in the morning
  3. Music – When I can block out the noise around me, I do MUCH better. Noise blocking headphones help even more. Just in the time that it took for me to write this blog, I’ve been pulled away from my computer multiple times because I heard a noise or got distracted. As soon as I put the music on, BOOM, much better.
  4. Turning OFF notifications – This one sounds like an anti-technology item, but I think it still belongs on the list. By default, notifications are always turned on for programs like Outlook and devices like your iPhone. I haven’t found a notification yet that can’t be turned off. I turn them ALL off except for phone calls. Then I make a point to open up my Outlook at a certain point in the day. Facebook will always be your worst enemy for concentration if you leave those notifications left on.
  5. OneNote – I use to not like OneNote but it’s grown on me. Some of the reasons I like it is I can use customized templates such as for my weekly planning. Then I use automation with Todoist’s API to remind myself to come back to notes the next day/week (depending on the practicality of the subject matter.
  6. Automation – I love software like Microsoft Flow, IFTTT, Zapier, etc. Any time you can automate something, that means you can use your concentration for something else. I do believe ADD is a gift because when I am able to focus on a task uninterrupted, I can do AMAZING work. It’s the small tasks that get in my way.
  7. Raspberry Pi – A Raspberry Pi is a little computer that runs on Linux. I bought mine for $100 and I love it. I use it to Filter internet content and connect some of my smart devices to my Apple Home app using HomeBridge.
  8. MintMobile – Because I have ALL of my retirement and bank accounts in one place, I minimize the risk of getting distracted while on the internet
  9. Siri – Voice to Text – My brain works faster than I can type or write. So being able to get things out of my mind works wonders.
  10. Chat GPT – I think of Chat GPT as a glorified search engine. I’m constantly looking for ways to write code for Marketing Cloud, websites, etc. Chat GPT is very intuitive and can help me when creating this code.

That’s my list! Please leave any ways that technology helps you focused in the comments!

Using Apple Focus to assist with New Year’s Resolutions

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I listen a lot to Jon Acuff on his Podcast, “All It Takes Is A Goal.” His podcast has been inspiring me to be much more dedicated and focused on my goals for 2023. Furthermore, I just read the book Atomic Habit by James Clear. This book gave me a lot of applicable ideas for how to succeed at my goals. If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend it.

So now, let’s get to the “Apple Focus” settings and how they work. If you have an Apple iPhone, you already have a “Focus” setting. You can select which “Focus” you use by going to the control center and holding the “Focus” switch. Like this:

What you may have noticed on the above video is the several additional “Focus” options that I have on my screen that you don’t have. You can create these by scrolling to the bottom of that list from the Control Center and clicking “+” which is what I did. I created “Morning”, “Hunting”, “Evening”, and tweaked the rest of them. You can set these Focus times to be at certain times of the day and then your Apple Watch and iPhone home screens will change to what you have selected. Here’s some of mine to give you some ideas…

MORNING

My Morning Watch has several Shortcuts that I can access with the tap of a button:

You can also add shortcuts to register your medication intake (which is what I did in my middle button). This will be one of the suggestions that Apple gives you when you assign programs to the buttons. I have this Focus Time set for the first 2 hours of the day that I’m up. I’m able to see what the weather will be, log my weight (one of my goals for the year), log my caffeine intake (another of my goals), and see how much time I spent in bed from my iPhone screen (again another of my goals). I track this time in my journal.

WORK

Work is a “Focus” that is already pre-built. For my watch, I have my ToDo list (I use Todoist), a shortcut for logging water and a shortcut for logging caffeine. I also like to see my calendar for the day so I don’t miss any meetings as well as my activity widget.

HUNTING

For Hunting, Apple Watch has a Compass that you can add as well as wind speed and sunrise/sunset (especially helpful when hunting deer). I also only allow only a few contacts to be able to call me when I’m hunting (a setting you’ll easily find when setting up a “Focus” setting).

NFC Tags

In addition to using Apple’s Focus settings, I also have NFC tags. NFC stands for Near-field communication. These stickers can be programmed to open shortcuts or apps when your phone touches them (also using the iOS shortcuts App). I typically use these for logs or to open my Maps Shortcut when I get into my car. You can purchase these on Amazon.

Living in the Woods changes you (literally)

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In the beginning of 2022, my wife became obsessed with chickens and the idea of having our own coop. The problem was that we lived in the middle of Fort Wayne, Indiana– a town that did not allow urban chickens (look it up, it’s a thing). Defeated, by the law, she dismissed the idea for the present.

That’s when I approached her about the idea of moving to the country and started to dream of what our life could look like if we had our own homestead. I was surprised and pleased that she agreed to the idea. This started our journey of finding our homestead.

Early on in that journey, I started reading a book called, “The Extended Mind –The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain” by Annie Murphy. The book helped me profoundly and talked about the impact that movement and nature have on our minds. When we are moving around, our mind is more active versus sitting at a desk. Also, the sharp lines and angles, and decor in an office setting can doesn’t put our minds in the best places. These sentences are just a short summary of the book. I encourage you to pick up your own copy on Amazon. Annie does a great job backing up all of her ideas with research.

Because of the book, we decided that we needed to have a house with some woods on the premise–the more the better. After several months of searching, multiple failed attempts at making an offer, and many conversations, we finally found our dream home and purchased it.

Our new home is surrounded by woods.

After our move, I noticed something unusual… I started losing weight. I wasn’t doing anything vastly different. Then I noticed my blood pressure was lower. My mind was more relaxed. I slept better. I had a physical later that month and was in the best health I’ve had in 10 years. Now, why did this happen? I believe it’s because of the trees that I am surrounded by. They really do change you. We were made to live in nature!

My obsession with Automation

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For quite a while, I’ve been intrigued with the idea of automation–the ability to have technology do tasks automatically. Automation is not new. In fact, to some degree that is why technology was created. Look at calculators and how much time they save us with our equations. Or your thermostat that turns off your furnace at just the right time. Fast-forward to today–we’re about to see a wave of automation like nothing we’ve seen before–and it’s going to be amazing.

You’re probably already using automation in your life to some degree but you don’t realize it. When you have all emails from Amazon go to your “receipts” folder in your email, that’s a form of automation.

I wanted to provide a couple of ways that I already use automation in my day-to-day life. My goal is to give my readers some ideas of how to use automation in their own lives. I’ll talk about the different platforms I’m using and also talk about some things that seem like no-brainers.

Platforms for Automation

ifttt.com –This is a very basic platform. It stand for “If This Than That.” It’s free to use. My frustration is that because of it’s simplicity, it’s severely limited in what it can do (more advanced recipes are not possible).

Zapier.com–This one is probably my favorite. If you know what you’re doing, you can essentially create a program. Zapier talks to so many different programs and can be utilized with Smart Homes.

Flow.microsoft.com –This is Microsoft’s answer to the automation industry. The only way that I would be interested in this solution is if my workplace used Office 365 as there are some really cool things you can do, especially with email.

iOS Shortcuts–If you have an iPhone, you already have this app on your phone. The app allows the user to create recipes (shortcuts) to save time. Unfortunately, it’s not fully automated as the iPhone user has to interact with notifications to allow them to run (even if you say, “iPhone, do this when I get to this location). The notification limitation is quite annoying. Hopefully this will be resolved in iOS 14.

Social Media

You can now use Hashtags to repost a post to other Facebook pages. Or perhaps you want your Facebook post to go to LinkedIn. You can use a particular hashtag for that too. The easiest way to make these work is through Zapier.

YouTube–again you can use Hashtags, but this actually something that YouTube natively supports. If you want, you can use hashtags to add a video to a playlist. There’s also a hashtag, “yt:cc=on” that will throw subtitles on your videos by default (the viewer can still turn them off).

Some of the more sophisticated automations that I’ve created are iOS shortcuts:

A program that will find directions to your next calendar appointment when you leave AND upload the mileage log with Google Sheets.

A program that will calculate how many minutes you’ve worked out each day for the month AND upload the report to Google Sheets.

There’s several other recipes just like these here: http://shortcutsgallery.com

Both of the programs that I referenced above use web hooks. This is one of the key ingredients for making the automations work. A web hook is a URL address that passes values to a server. It looks like this:

https://maker.ifttt.com/trigger/log_miles/with/key/DS:KJSDF?value1=582&value2=523

The above link passes 582 as the first value for a program and 523 as the second value. This one is used to populate values in a Google Sheet report. Web hooks allow your iPhone to talk with your smart home. There’s a ton of other things that you can do with URL addresses, but we’ll save that discussion for another time.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention one of the oldest and most powerful forms of automation on computers–you’re spreadsheet program. Google Spreadsheets, Microsoft Excel, and Apple Numbers all have various formulas that you can use to save time for equations. Even better, they have something called “Macros.” A Macro is essentially a script that you can run to change your spreadsheet. Say that you have 20 spreadsheet tables–each one for a different customer and you need to change the format. You can do so by “recording” what you did on the first spreadsheet. Then at the end, you would assign a keystroke to the script and run the script on the other 19. The script would do the exact some thing on the other 19 spreadsheets.

No matter your profession, you can find a way to save time through automation. The tools are out there.

OS X:Terminal break for Serial Console on OS X

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To perform a password recovery on a Cisco router you need to issue a “terminal break” character to interrupt the boot process. The Cisco page on terminal break shows a lot of break sequences.

The break sequence for “screen” is to use Ctrl-A and then Ctrl-B. The Ctrl-A shifts the focus back to the screen process (away from the serial console) and the Ctrl-B issues the break sequence.

You may need to break more than once. This is done by Ctrl-A, Ctrl-B, Ctrl-B, Ctrl-B.

Minicom — Cisco Router Software

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Minicom is an Apple based program to access your Cisco router. To hook your computer to your Cisco router, you will need:

Serial Convert Cable  & Rollover Cable Female to Male

OR

USB to RJ45 Cisco CableUSB to RJ45

Install the App

  1. Press Command+Space and type Terminal and press enter/return key.
  2. Run in Terminal app:
    ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)" < /dev/null 2> /dev/null
    and press enter/return key. Wait for the command to finish.
  3. Run:
    brew install minicom

Done! You can now use minicom.