-: What is the Internet of Things? 2 2
Well, it's pretty much everything. 3 3
If your refrigerator has a wireless connection in it, 4 4
it's part of the Internet of Things. 5 5
In my house, we have a Nest Thermostat, 6 6
which is part of the Internet of Things. 7 7
I have smart TVs that access the internet 8 8
and let me watch YouTube and Netflix. 9 9
And this is part of the Internet of Things too. 10 10
The other things that we have 11 11
are things like traditional servers 12 12
and laptops and desktops, your smartphone, your car, 13 13
all of these things, wherever they are, 14 14
they all seem to be online nowadays. 15 15
And this is where the Internet of Things comes in. 16 16
And you have to understand 17 17
some of the technologies used by these IoT 18 18
or Internet of Things devices 19 19
in order to pass your Network+ exam. 20 20
So what are some specific Internet of Things technologies? 21 21
Well, the first one is 802.11. 22 22
Do you remember what that stood for? 23 23
That's right. 24 24
It's Wifi. It's wireless networking. 25 25
802.11, a b g, n, or ac. 26 26
And we'll talk about all those letters later on 27 27
are all wireless or Wifi. 28 28
And you can operate those as either infrastructure mode 29 29
or ad-hoc mode. 30 30
And if you have an Internet of Things device 31 31
like a wireless speaker or refrigerator or a thermostat, 32 32
they can use that Wifi to make connections 33 33
back to the outside world. 34 34
The second technology we're going to talk about 35 35
is Bluetooth. 36 36
And Bluetooth as you could see 37 37
in the upper right hand corner on this blue key chain fob 38 38
can be used for all sorts of different things. 39 39
Now, why would you want your keys 40 40
to have a Bluetooth receiver in them? 41 41
Well, maybe you lose them a lot. 42 42
And this way you can use your cell phone 43 43
to figure out where they are based on Bluetooth 44 44
and their location, because they're low power devices. 45 45
They're small, they're portable, 46 46
and they use low energy as part of this Bluetooth variant. 47 47
This allows you to be part of this mesh network as well. 48 48
So your keys can talk to your cell phone via Bluetooth, 49 49
and then your cell phone can connect over cellular 50 50
to tell you where those keys are. 51 51
The next one we have is RFID. 52 52
And RFID stands for Radio-frequency ID. 53 53
Now, if you've ever gone to a hotel room and you got a key, 54 54
like I show here on the screen, 55 55
this key has a chip embedded in it. 56 56
And it uses an electromagnetic field that when you put it 57 57
next to the door lock, 58 58
it reads the tag in the key and let you in the room. 59 59
The next one we have is what's known 60 60
as Near-field Communication or NFC. 61 61
NFC is going to enable two electronic devices 62 62
to communicate within about four centimeters 63 63
of each other. 64 64
So Samsung was actually one of the first to really use 65 65
Near-field Communications for Samsung pay 66 66
and devices like Apple pay and Google pay 67 67
use that same type of technology. 68 68
When you put your phone on the reader, 69 69
it can read it through Near-field Communication 70 70
and take payment from you. 71 71
The next technology we have is IR, 72 72
which stands for Infrared. 73 73
So if you take your remote for your TV at home, 74 74
this probably uses infrared because it has a line of sight 75 75
using an infrared frequency, 76 76
and it uses these light beams to tell the TV, 77 77
which channel you want. 78 78
This is how it's going to work. 79 79
And Internet of Things technologies 80 80
can use infrared as well 81 81
although it is a much older technology 82 82
and not use very heavily by them, 83 83
it is something that is available. 84 84
And so I wanted to make sure you knew about it for the exam. 85 85
Now, the next two technologies we're going to talk about 86 86
are very common nowadays. 87 87
And they're actually newer technologies 88 88
that are really been made popular by the Internet of Things. 89 89
The first one is Z-Wave. 90 90
Z-Wave is going to provide you with a short range, 91 91
low latency data transfer, 92 92
and it's going to use lower power and lower data rates 93 93
than Wifi does. 94 94
But again, you're trading off lower speed 95 95
because you're getting lower power consumption. 96 96
Wifi can really burn up your battery pretty quickly. 97 97
And so for Internet of Things devices, 98 98
we try to say battery whenever possible. 99 99
Mostly you're going to find things like Z-Wave 100 100
used for home automation. 101 101
So for the exam, 102 102
if you see a question that's talking about Z-Wave, 103 103
I want you to think about home automation, 104 104
things like turning your lights on and off, 105 105
turning sounds on and off, that kind of thing. 106 106
All of that uses Z-Wave. 107 107
The other technology we have is known as ANT plus, ANT+. 108 108
This is going to be a collection 109 109
of transfer of sensory data. 110 110
So if you're going to have a tire pressure system 111 111
in your car, it may be using ANT+. 112 112
It can also be used with remote control systems, 113 113
things like tire pressures, TVs, lights, et cetera. 114 114
So you can know what things are on and what things are off. 115 115
Anything with a sensor in it, 116 116
is usually going to be something that's using ANT+. 117 117
So some of this home automation stuff 118 118
that we're talking about can be used either Z-Wave or ANT+ 119 119
and it really could be either one. 120 120
But if you're thinking more of sensors 121 121
and collecting the temperature or how bright something is, 122 122
that's usually more of an ANT+ thing. 123 123
And Z-Wave, they're going to refer to things 124 124
like home automation, 125 125
just to keep things simple on the exam. 126 126
And that's the idea of these Internet of Things 127 127
technologies. 128 128
So when you look at the Internet of Things, 129 129
if you look at all of these devices 130 130
and how they're connecting to our networks, 131 131
and from a security standpoint, 132 132
that's going to be a little frightening, right? 133 133
And so when we talk about the security section later on, 134 134
I want you to think about these Internet of Things. 135 135
One of the ongoing jokes in the IT community 136 136
is that security is what the S stands for 137 137
in Internet of Things. 138 138
Well, there's no S in IoT, right? 139 139
There's no security in IoT, that's the joke. 140 140
But from a technology standpoint, 141 141
these things are pretty cool, right? 142 142
We can do all sorts of cool stuff with them. 143 143
I can pull out my cell phone from anywhere in the world 144 144
and turn on the lights in my house or my security system, 145 145
or I can turn up or turn down the temperature 146 146
using all that automation. 147 147
These are really cool technologies, 148 148
but you have to also think about the security of them 149 149
as you're thinking about how they're connecting 150 150
to your network 151 151
and how you want to keep the rest of your systems 152 152
safe and secure.