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CompTIA A+ Certification All-in-One Exam Guide

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devices.

Setting up these personal assistants is straightforward. Connect the device

to the local Wi-Fi and log on to the device from a Web browser to

personalize. Once you associate the device with your manufacturer account,

the device is good to go, making your life better.

Protocols: Z-Wave and Zigbee

Using wireless technology for home automation has many challenges. First

are the huge number of IoT devices that a modern home might potentially

use, from thermostats to washing machines to power outlets and light bulbs.

Secondly, homes, unlike offices, are filled with small rooms, narrow

staircases, and other obstacles that make regular radio-based wireless

difficult. Yet demand for home automation is strong, and two competing

technologies, Z-Wave and Zigbee, are in direct, head-to-head competition in

wireless home automation. Z-Wave is a proprietary standard (with an open

API for programmers), while Zigbee is a completely open standard. Both use

a mesh networking topology to facilitate communication in homes, yet both

also have hubs that act as the network interconnect.

Internet Troubleshooting

There isn’t a person who’s spent more than a few hours on a computer

connected to the Internet who hasn’t run into some form of connectivity

problem. I love it when I get a call from someone saying, “The Internet is

down!” as I always respond the same way: “No, the Internet is fine. It’s the

way you’re trying to get to it that’s down.” Okay, so I don’t make a lot of

friends with that remark, but it’s actually a really good reminder of why we

run into problems on the Internet. Let’s review the common symptoms

CompTIA lists on their objectives for the CompTIA A+ 220-1001 exam and

see what we can do to fix these all-too-common problems.

The dominant Internet setup for a SOHO environment consists of some

box from your ISP: a cable or fiber modem, a DSL modem, etc. that connects

via Ethernet cable to a home router. This router is usually 802.11 capable and

includes four Ethernet ports. Some computers in the network connect through

a wire and some connect wirelessly (see Figure 21-52). It’s a pretty safe

assumption that CompTIA has a setup like this in mind when talking about

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