 Think Tech Hawaii, civil engagement lives here. Aloha, this is Matt Darnell. I'm here joined with Greg Jackson, our lovely co-host. Greg, hello. How you doing? And we are here to support your tech. We're with Comtel here, and we are supporting your tech. Today we're going to be talking about switches, network switches that you have that is kind of the glue for your whole network. So we'll be doing that in the second half of the show. But we'll start off as always. We're going to talk about what we have with our current event. So the first thing we have... Wait a second. Yeah. What about your trip? I was gone last week. Yeah. Tell me about your trip. Did you notice? Barely. Barely, right? I'm forgettable. I'm easy to miss. All those kinds of things. So yeah, I was actually in Europe. I went to my cousin's wedding down near Sicily. So it was really... It was different. Some things hit you immediately. The very first night we were there trying to get to our hotel room, and he said it's on the first floor. So we walked around for five minutes on the first floor trying to find... But the floor is zero. I mean, they're programmers. Programmers always start programming zero. You don't start at one, you start at zero. So the ground level is zero. Okay. And then they finally... I was embarrassed. Where's our room? We cannot find our room. He goes, oh, it's on the first floor. So after about two minutes of language kind of difficulty, figured out that the first floor was the floor above the ground level. And then you go to the parking lot underground. It's got zero, one, two, three, four going up and going down is zero, negative one, negative two, negative three, right? I guess if you're in the metric system, you keep everything... How do you skip zero? Right? That kind of thing. No B1. Parking you one, parking two. No, there's no concept of that. I noticed the calls are different when you were calling in too, when we try to chat. So internet's awesome, not awesome? That was one surprising thing that was that in every hotel we went to, you could get a strong Wi-Fi signal, but the throughput was not very high. So all kind of connection issues. And I use T-Mobile. And with T-Mobile, in most European countries, you get free texting, which is nice, and 2G data, which for web browsing is painful. I don't know how we lived through those kinds of speeds, but I was able to use what's called a soft phone, which is kind of like Skype, but for business that I was able to use on my phone, on the 2G. And so I just use the data plan there, and I connected back to our servers here in Hawaii. Those are the good calls. Those are the good calls, yeah. Interesting. I would get on the Wi-Fi, thinking, oh, that's going to be a better call. And I'd have connection issues. And I would get off the Wi-Fi, over onto the 2G, and it worked well. So for sure, if you're ever doing any kind of traveling or anything like that, definitely something that you want to do research on. The best way to connect, the best way to get back. Or happy to have you back, man. It's good to be back. Italy's great. I'm Italian, and that type of thing. But there's nothing like sleeping in your own bed. Nothing like those kind of things. And yeah, it was 24 hours of flights. And it makes me, you know, that round the world in 80 days, that used to be a challenge. I mean, can you imagine traveling? I mean, that really was the far east. I mean, when you went to the far east, that was far away. And I remind, my boys are complaining about a 10-hour flight, you know, 11 hours from Frankfurt to Los Angeles. And I said, you know, people going from New York to, like, say, you know, for the gold rush, that was like a whole year. It took to get from one end of the country to the other. And then maybe you'd make it over, you know, the Rockies. You know, that type of thing. So yeah, so anyway, it was a great trip. Good fun. I have some tech stories and some pictures, but we'll save that for a none. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, so Atari, it's all new people. Is that the blow in the cartridge out thing? Exactly, exactly. Yeah, and having to do that banging against your hand. And we used to take our controllers apart and have to, you know, loop them up and those kind of things. But it's going to let you do that. They raised almost $3 million on Indiegogo. That's 2,979% above their goal of what they were looking to get and have that there. So it's fantastic. You have like a hundred classic games. So you think it's like an emulator running on some hardware? I'm sure. I'm sure. It's probably using open source, the main emulator or anything like that. And you can do that on a Raspberry Pi now. I always tell myself, once I get rid of the kids, I'm going to build an old school console cabinet, you know. And stand up and play with it. Literally. I mean, my two favorite games are Miss Pac-Man and Gallagher. Gallagher is a winner. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Have that kind of thing. But there's going to be new and exclusive game tiles. They're going to download. And, you know, you'll be able to watch twitch.tv streams. You'll be able to do that. Hopefully the show. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. But, you know, if you like Fortnite or, you know, PUBG or whatever the kids are doing this way. And then the controller is going to be Bluetooth. Awesome. But they're going to have an adapter. So if you want to use your old school controller, you'll be able to do that. I mean, one joystick. One joystick has the juice to do it. One button. You think there's enough throughput on Bluetooth to make it responsive? I don't know. You can go eight directions in one button. I'm a little picky with my responsiveness. That's a lot of data. Yeah. I mean, that's almost two bits right there. Anyway, it's going to be released in March, mid 2019. Awesome. Yeah. I will definitely be looking at that for sure. Then I was thinking about tech conferences. And the end point was, are they worth it? In today's world, do you need to go to a tech conference? Us in Hawaii. It's a long time to get to, you know, long time. It's a six-hour flight, right, from Honolulu to to McCarron in Las Vegas. But is that important? I mean, to watch, I mean, to watch, I want to watch a CEO babble on for 30 minutes about something inconsequential like I want, like I want to get a root canal, right? I mean, I think the only reason to go to a tech conference is to meet people. Yeah. Right? It's not about the vendor. It's not about that. But we used to use that to connect to people. Breakout sessions. Absolutely. We're going to have that there. And it's... We saw that with Comtex. I mean, that thing died years ago. Absolutely. And that CES is not as far beyond a computer like me. It's everything, consume electronics and have that. And when those... And I understand. I mean, there's very little benefit for a CEO to get up there and be adventuresome. Their words are picked so clearly, so cleanly, so specifically. And the penalty for saying the wrong thing far outweighs the benefit you can get by saying the right thing. Yeah. They're just toe the road, middle of the line. Nothing controversial. Nothing at all. So I think you can learn more by reading the articles, all the YouTube streams, all that from going to conferences. I think the only reason to go to conferences, in my opinion, would be to meet people. You're trying to network and that type of thing. So I do think conferences are going the way the dodo bird. They'll all be streamed. Yeah. Maybe eventually we have drones. We can just rent a drone and the drone goes through all the conferences. Absolutely. Yeah. You just have your autonomous robot and it's going to find the important things for you. But yeah. And this is something I thought was interesting. Anytime a Tesla car crashes, it could be a fender bender or anything. That's front page news on all the websites. Is that fair? I mean, is that... I know it's new, but I mean, does that interest you when you read that a Tesla autopilot crashed? Well, I think for me what I'm interested in is how's it going to affect me or my kids? So I'm interested in the stats. The onesies and twosies, I mean, the pictures say a lot, right? You know, this could be you in the car or this could be you between, you know, the wall on the car. So I'm interested in how we need a way to successfully progress without risking lives. And, you know, it's new. So they get paid to, when you see pictures like we're showing now, that speaks volumes, right? So I think there's value in it and you get some excitement over it, but I think really for me it's understanding how it's going to affect me. I really wish they'd do more testing where there's no people, but maybe they've passed that and now we're in the human experimental stage. Human experimental, right? This is not shampoo. This is not shampoo where we're going to experiment. And like, we drove all around Italy through Rome and it was scary sometimes. I really, like we drove the Maldicost and you just turn the corner, you close your eyes and you hope that you get through. I mean, there's a bus coming on the other side, you know, two feet to your right. There's a cliff, you know, to take you down there. And even in the towns, you know, all the lane dividers, those are suggestions. And they're not even strong suggestions. I mean, you get what should be a three-lane road. You get four cars sideways and then two scooters in between. How in the world? And then it'll go from five lanes down to three with zero, you know, buffer. It doesn't go down. It just, two lanes disappear out of nowhere. And anyway, so I don't know how it's going to, I mean, I had trouble as a human, you know, figuring out which lane I should go into. Well, the claim is they're going to do it better than a human. The road is complete. And that's what they're good at, you know. But when there's things that are just confusing, you know, like there was one stretch on the autobahn we drove from Munich down to Slovenia, where for about three miles or five kilometers, you know. There you go. Yeah, exactly. There were no lanes on the road. Okay. They had just repaved and there's no lanes. So just stay to the left? Just do what you can. I mean, be smart, right? You know, and keep space from the other cars. So anyway, so I do think it, so to me, I'm not interested. I think it's kind of unfair that they get, I mean, it's such a huge thing that anytime there's an autopilot crash, they have that. I was reading Tesla's, you know, when you had to hit OK, you know, this says autopilot is designed for use on highways that have a center divider and clear lane markings. So they're expecting the driver to qualify the scenario in which you engage it. Exactly. Interesting. Right, yeah. So anyway, so I thought that was kind of thing. Now, here's the kind, this kind of relates to what you folks were talking about last week. And by the way, I think I did a great job last week. Oh, thanks. Yourself and Mr. Michael Fry is they have these smart toothbrushes now that will connect to your phone and they'll let you know about your positioning. You know, are you too high up, too low? Are you pushing too hard on, against your gums? It'll count your strokes. Keep track of the minutes so you can have competitions with your friend who brushes the longest. Have you ever seen the movie Uncle Buck? One of the funniest things, and that's by John Canning. It's a classic. You should definitely see it. He's babysitting his one niece and nephew and he said, did you brush your teeth? They go, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he goes, I have a friend in the crime lab who can tell if you really brushed your teeth or if you just got them wet. And so this is like true. Now, you can go ahead and do that. So it's amazing. So this one is very interesting to me. I'm in the middle of reading a book called The Power of Habit. And in the book, they talk about how we came to start brushing our teeth more. And the concept is that if you brush your teeth, they wanted to equate kind of a result. If you brush your teeth, you use this toothpaste and the book explains the scenario where the toothpaste creates a foam. That foam gives you the idea that your teeth are going to be brighter and whiter. And this is an interest to you? Yeah, well, hold on. Yes, it is. OK, all right, all right. I'm assuming you're going somewhere. Yeah, I'm getting there. OK. So the point, the way, all this came up because they were trying to sell more toothpaste. How do you get people to brush their teeth? Wash, rinse, repeat. Yeah, well, why? I'm still in the shower. But why? But there's kids. I mean, your kids are at, why? Why? I've got great teeth. Who cares? So you need to attach some kind of result. And in between the result and creating the habit, you have to have some feedback. There's a feedback loop. And part of that is the foam and the feeling and the minty fresh. But they proved that physically there's no difference between wiping your teeth with a paper towel and brushing with a good toothpaste. But because they gave that feedback, it engaged the person brushing their teeth, gave them a sense of completion and a sense that they were getting their teeth clean. So what you said is very interesting because now if you're going to have competitions, you're going to log it, you're engaging the person brushing it, you literally could increase people brushing their teeth just by satisfying and creating a habit. There's magic that happens in that habit process. Well, and the hard part is, if I don't brush my teeth today, beside my breath stinking, what is the cause of that? Yeah. Anyway, so I just thought that was interesting. It's like what is next, you know, I mean, as far as that. But it makes sense, have comp, who brushes longest and who does this and have that. So, okay, well, again, my name is Matt Darnell with comp. I'm here with Greg Jackson. We are supporting your tech. Right after the break, we're going to come back and talk to you about network switches. Hello. One in three teens who smoke will lose years of these moments. It's your life. Don't miss a thing. Hello, I'm Dave Stevens, host of the Cyber Underground. This is where we discuss everything that relates to computers. It's just going to scare you out of your mind. So come join us every week here on thinktecawaii.com, 1 p.m. on Friday afternoons. And then you can go see all our episodes on YouTube. Just look up the Cyber Underground on YouTube. All our shows will show up. And please follow us. We're always giving you current, relevant information to protect you. Keeping you safe. Aloha. Aloha. This again, this is Matt Darnell. We're supporting your tech here with Greg Jackson. We're both with Comptile.Cloud, and we're here to talk to you a little bit about small business networking. And the center part of any network that you have is your Ethernet switch. And if we can switch to the diagram here. In our past episodes, we've already talked about our internet connection. There are a variety of different folks that you're able to get your internet from. And we've talked about this router here, this router part here, and in a small business network, the router and firewall are all one thing. They're all in one package. And larger in enterprise, you'll have, those will be two separate devices. You'll have one, a router that literally routes traffic like an operator would. Or, and there's something else that does your firewall. So we've actually talked about those two pieces. And now what we're talking about are these two things right here, these switches. Now they are, as I mentioned, they are the center of your network. And you'll notice also, there are these also the wireless and that is another way to connect. But not as reliable and most people like the plug-in connection. So these switches here are the backbone of your network. And they come in a lot of different flavors, a lot of different colors, shape sizes, price points for that. And a couple of things that you want to know. As you'll notice here, the internet connection comes in from the internet provider. It could be Comcast. It could be cable, DSL, and then goes to the router. And then this, this leg right here connects in all of these different devices. So they're all connected through this one switch. Now in this topology we can see that this other switch here is connected back through there. So for this desktop here to get out to the world it's going to be wired to this switch. Then it's going to go through this switch. Then out through the router. This connection right here between the two switches we call that daisy chaining. So you daisy chain the two switches. And probably the worst thing that a lot of businesses do, let me go ahead and start over here, is they will do multiple. And so off of this switch they'll have a cable that goes to another switch. And then that might go to a computer. And then they've got another cable over here that goes to this and then this computer is there. Oh, we have one more. And then I've got another computer. So they'll just daisy chain them. So this computer to get to the world it's got to come through this switch, and they're going to get out and like that. Imagine troubleshooting that. Absolutely. So it works great when you first plug it in but the first time you have trouble because if this computer here has trouble then I've got to worry about this switch, this switch, this switch, this switch, all the connections in between. And a lot can go wrong. The majority of times when that will happen is they'll have an office maybe and there's one connection here for this computer. Now this office used to be the CEO so it's a huge office but now CEO changed offices so there's five people in that room. So what's the easiest way to connect five computers off of this one cable? Another switch. Absolutely. Just throw in another switch. And you go down to Best Buy, you buy a switch and now I can hang all of these computers off of that one switch. So generally that will work. I mean, it's not going to come to a screeching halt type of thing but again long term that's not the way that you want to do it. It's quick, it's easy and I'll see if people want to bring a network scan or a printer or a little thing like their old credit card swipe machine used to use a phone line but now it connects to the network so they've got to go ahead and do that. So that's the number one mistake when I walk into a small business I look and see how many switches do you have and the problem is this switch is underneath Susie's desk and Susie left and now it's Jack and then Jack left and Tom was there and now and no one knows it's there so all of a sudden there's a problem and well I don't know what's where so in an unmanaged network you just plug things all in you can't keep track and you have problems there so that's the number one thing in a perfect scenario what we want to have is everything go back to one maybe two, we want these two switches right next to each other because the biggest switch that you will find most case is going to have 48 ports in it so that gives you maybe 47, 46 usable ports and so I can connect 47 devices into there and then if I have 100 devices or I have more devices than that I need to buy another switch so that's why I would connect both of these in the same closet in the same room and have all my cables go back to to one place there so we're going to talk a little bit more about cables for the show but yeah so if you go to your office and you see a lot of switches especially if they're small little 5 ports they have 5 poopoocas in them and they look like they're home use or sitting on the floor somewhere exactly it probably works today but in the future that's definitely going to be a problem I think some people don't realize especially small business owners may not appreciate that when you have a room that's not working or people are not working that one little switch not managing this how much are you paying those people not to work and so troubleshooting wait for your IT guy to show up and troubleshoot it maybe you put in a ticket maybe you call your vendor all that stuff takes time so investing up front hopefully talk a little bit about cabling why should I spend when I can go out and buy a $50 switch why should I spend hundreds of dollars more on cabling but some people might be asking the difference between switch and router how would you explain that because you tend to see both right routers have switches in them and some routers will have that built in where this router here and just by this one picture here this would be one of those types of routers here so we have one connection here and if you look at the back of your router a lot of time that's called WAN which is our wide area network really legacy terms for that we have the WAN and then we have some LAN ports LAN is our local area network and you can think of LAN as being private protected that type of thing so these three connections here coming off the router will be our LAN ports so built into this one device there is a switch that allows us to connect multiple ports into that they're not the same they're different they're just one piece of hardware and you can use and not use the router portion and just use the LAN portion the switch portion built built into there absolutely so you'll see that in a lot of micro offices whether they have maybe four or five computers they have one device for everything but then again the problem is once they add that 6th computer, 7th computer they start daisy-chain stacking these $50 switches and you go to Amazon you can get a gigabit switch for $20 from a reputable manufacturer so that's the number one problem when I'm troubleshooting a client network and they say they're having problems and it's not always sometimes and I look at the switches and they're all over and this cable as people are stepping on it and it's like I'm surprised you don't have more problems when we look at the state of your network you have to have a real heart to heart with them how important is your data network and if they say it's very important then you ask them how much money are you willing to invest into your data network because with that any switch you buy today should be a gigabit at a minimum don't buy and the way that you'll see that is it might say like 10-100 if that's all it says move on it should be at a minimum 10-100-1000 and the 1000 is the gigabit even if your computers don't have gigabit ports you want that central core that switch you got all these 100 megabits connecting to it and you want the ports to be hefty and you want the backplane to be good absolutely, absolutely so the speed you definitely want is gigabit and have that now advanced features that you might see on a switch things you might 802.11 802.1Q Q, there's N exactly but VLANs and those types of things is okay with that if you just have one switch meaning everything comes in to what I have and I've got a router and then everything's plugged into one switch a modern switch you'd be very hard to saturate if you had every port plugged in there with all the different computers and printers and it would be very, very difficult to saturate what we call the backplane and what the part that connects all of the individual ports together there very difficult to have that there now another piece of advice is if anything if you look at everybody go and look at your switches if anything says hub on them HUB get rid of it today we don't need to go into why that is but if anything says hub we definitely don't want to have that there are some times we troubleshoot with hubs but in a general use business case hub is no no exactly you want to do a wire capture kind of thing and then as far as support goes so there are three types of administration that we find and the words you might see one is unmanaged and that means you can't control anything everything it's just we call it a dumb switch it's unmanaged all it does is forward traffic to all the different things then we have web managed and the next step up which allows me to have a web console and I can go in there smart switch, web managed switch and then there's managed and the easiest way that I find to do a real quick assessment if it's a fully managed or like web managed is if it has a serial port on it that means that's a higher end switch and most businesses don't need that kind of technology if you're an enterprise or you have a hundred users or three locations or you're on three different floors you probably need a fully managed switch and I think what's really important since we are in the phone business one of the things that we typically ask our customers is you may have to get a smart switch if you want to manage your phone traffic if you want to do priority so hopefully that was a help for you about switches and the very key important part of your network don't daisy chain those switches do the cabling, do yourself a long term favor it'll save you a lot of time so I want to thank Greg Jackson again I'm glad to be back and this is Matt Darnell, we're supporting your tech Aloha