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In this lesson, I want to show you what some

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of these devices look like.

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We talked in the last lecture about hubs and bridges

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and switches and routers and all of their different uses

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and placements throughout the network.

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But when you look at a small office

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or a home office network,

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you might have everything in a single device,

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something that looks like this.

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Now, as we look at this a little bit closer,

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you could see the front, it's going to have all the blinking

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lights and tell you what's going on.

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But if we look at the back, we'll actually see

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that this single device actually has multiple

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different functions in it.

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The first function it has is

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what's called the wide-area network,

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and this is where we're going to connect a cable line

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or a coaxial cable that's going to provide our internet access.

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Now, that gives us our external network,

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that wide-area network,

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but if we want to connect it to our internal network,

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we have to have a routing function.

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And so there's a built-in router

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that routes the wide-area network connection into this

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internal or LAN connection.

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Now, the internal connection is going to happen over these

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ports, and these switch ports are going to be just a simple

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switch that's embedded into this device.

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So we have a switch and we have a router,

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and we have this wide-area network connection.

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Additionally, we have over here, all the way over here,

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this is where an antenna gets plugged in

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because this device has a wireless access point

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built in as well.

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So now we have a router, a switch,

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and a wireless access point all in a single device.

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But there's still something else here.

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When I talked about this wide-area network connection,

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we are actually talking about plugging in coaxial cable,

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but converting it so it can talk with these devices here

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that are on Cat5 or ethernet cables.

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To do that, we're going to be using a media converter.

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And so in this one single device,

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we have four different functions.

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We have our switch, we have our router,

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we have our wide-area network connection or media converter,

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and we have a wireless access point.

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Now, do all of these things have to exist in a single box?

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Well, no.

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And in fact, most office networks,

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we're going to break these out into individual boxes

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or machines or functions.

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So let me show you what that looks like.

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Let's start with the media converter.

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So I talked about in the combined box,

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we were taking coaxial cable in and converting it.

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So we can talk over Cat5 or ethernet.

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Well media converters can convert two dissimilar

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signals any way you want.

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You might go from fiber to cable.

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You might go from cable to ethernet,

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you might go from fiber to ethernet,

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you might go all sorts of different ways.

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In fact, right here I have two different media converters

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and actually part of a set.

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So one is the transmitter and one is the receiver.

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So as I bring these over here so you can see them,

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I have my transmitter on this side

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and my receiver on this side.

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Now you'll notice that they both have HDMI jacks right here.

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Now if I turn them around, you'll see

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that they have Cat5 or ethernet.

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What these are used for is

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for me to be able to take a long distance run of video

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over HDMI and be able to push it over a Cat5

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or an ethernet cable.

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Now, why would I want to do that

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and send it from this transmitter over HDMI, over Cat5,

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from Cat5 to the other one,

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and then from Cat5 back to HDMI?

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Well, because HDMI can only do short cable runs.

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In fact, anything over about 20 feet,

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you're going to have problems with your HDMI connections.

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So if you're going to have a big home theater set up,

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you're going to need some kind of a media converter like this

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to be able to run things from your satellite dish to your TV

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or from your cable box to the projector

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or whatever those things are.

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And that's exactly what we use this for.

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This is to be able to go to do a 50 foot run from

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where our cable boxes are all the way up to our projector is

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so that we can then display the information we want.

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And being able to do that media conversion from HDMI over

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to Cat5 allows us to do that.

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Now the next thing I want to talk about is a switch.

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And we talked about the fact

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that this had a switch built into it in

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this all-in-one device.

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Well, switches can be small or they can be big.

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In fact, right here I have a pocket-size switch.

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This is an unmanaged switch.

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Now this switch has five ports

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and it is an unmanaged switch,

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meaning that it's going to gimme the benefits of a bridge

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and it's going to give me the benefits of a hub,

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where I have a single collision domain per port

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and one broadcast domain for the entire five ports.

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But other than that, this is a dumb switch.

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It doesn't have VLANs, it doesn't have any

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of the ethernet features that we're going to talk about.

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Instead, this is just a simple dumb switch

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and it costs me about five to $7.

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It will allow me to take the network connection coming in

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and then pass that out to the remaining ports.

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That's all this is going to do.

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And again, our combination device already had one

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of those built in for us.

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Now the next thing we were talking about was it had

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wireless capability.

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And so for that, we're going to use a wireless access point.

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Now, most of you, when you think of a wireless access point,

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are probably actually thinking of a combination device.

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If you look at your wireless access point,

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you turn around the backside and it has four

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of those switch ports in there,

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it's actually a combination device.

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It's a wireless access point with a router

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and with a switch just like the

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one I showed you at the beginning.

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But you also can have just a

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wireless access point like this.

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And as you look at this one, you'll see

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that I have the two network antennas,

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but if I turn it over to the side,

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you're going to see there's only a single network jacks.

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And the reason for that is this is just a media converter

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to go from Cat5 to wireless.

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That's what a wireless access point is.

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It's that simple.

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It's a very simple device.

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It takes whatever's coming in over this Cat5 connection

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and it sends it out over these antennas.

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That's all wireless access point does.

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Now, when I go back to the original one I showed you,

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this one is a combination device.

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It has a wireless access point, but it also has a router

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and it also has a switch.

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This one does not.

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It's simply a wireless access point.

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So I know we covered a lot in this lesson,

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but what I really wanted to show you was

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that these devices can be broken apart into individual

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components, but a lot of times, they're not.

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And so when you go to the store

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and you say, "Hey, I want to buy a wireless router,"

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there really is no such thing as a wireless router.

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There is a wireless access point switch

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and router combination box

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that is marketed as a wireless router,

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but there is no such thing as a wireless router.

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Now the reason is

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because people who are marketing things are marketing them

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to consumers, and so they're trying to dumb it down

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to the easiest thing to understand.

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But on the Network+ exam, I want you to remember

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that each of these boxes

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and each of these functions do a different thing.

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And if they're talking about a wireless access point,

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that's not the same as a wireless router,

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which has a switch, a router,

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and a wireless access point all combined together.

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So we'll talk more about this as we go through the course,

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but hopefully this was helpful to give you a general idea of

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what some of these devices are.

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Now, I'll see you in the next lesson.