Joshua,
Thank you for the feedback. We had a particularly hard time finding software that generated the right mix of compatibility issues for that show and settled on the firewall software because it exhibited the symptoms we needed. Originally our producer had intended for us to use an old skiing game but it turned out it required the 16-bit sublayer and there was no way to make it work on the newer OSes even with the compatibility settings as 16-bit software is no longer supported. I would have to go back and watch the episode again, but I seem to recall one of us mentioning that it was a bad idea to run the firewall software during the episode. If we didn't, we can easily add an errata to the episode but I think it might be a "Caution: Coffee is Hot" type issue that goes without saying.
Thanks again,
Don Pezet
Host, ITProTV

Great, thanks for the info!

Jeremy,
Nevermind, one of our guys just found the mislabeled video and fixed it. Thanks again for pointing that out.
Don Pezet
Host, ITProTV

I know that UEFI is not part of A+ yet.
But can you talk about UEFI?
The differences with Legacy BIOS and UEFI.

"BIOS was designed with the earliest computers as instructions to make sure the hardware had some abilities to
boot the system. It has worked well and continues to work well until start working with systems that need to
boot from 3TeraByte or larger drives, this is something that BIOS wasn't ever really designed to do. This has
to do with the fact that >3TB Hard Disk Drives a newer low-level format (4KB SECTORS rather than 512byte
SECTORS)" There are many other differences but think about it in terms of new hardware requirements
essentially demand more than BIOS can do at boot so UEFI is needed.

"Why UEFI?"

#1
The UEFI at boot, depending on the hardware, can possibly provide web access and loading of games without
having to boot the OS! At the same time, it gives the same options that allow you to boot up the computer in
the standard way.
#2
Better security against bios attacks (bootkits)
#3
Faster startup times and resumption from hiberation
#4
Support for >3TB hard drives
#5
Support for 64 bit firmware device drives that use massive amounts of memory during startup
#6
Support for GPT (GUID Partition Tables) that will allow you to create more than the basic 4 partitions on a
single drive.
there's probably more...

How to deal with UEFI problems?
"Problems in booting with UEFI and Windows."

If you're running an OS that supports secure-boot, normally installing windows 8, for example, it shouldn't be
problematic at all. If you're trying to run an operating system that is not UEFI aware per se, then you may
have to enter setup and disable the fancy features and let it use a BIOS legacy startup.

"Problems with hardware issues when booting with UEFI."

The only real problems are with older hardware that may not recognize the UEFI. I'm sure there are a myriad of
other issues but they all relate to the this common fact.

"And how to deal with UEFI problems with Linux."

The big issue is the boot issue, In UEFI systems, it expects the HDDs to be GPT (GUID Partition Table) style
and not MBR (Master Boot Record). In BIOS systems, it expect the HDDs to be MBR. When you try to install
some Linux Distros (I must emphasize SOME), GRUB doesn't load on to the GPT drives. You can convert the GPT
Drives into MBR to help with the issues, or you can find some of the newer distros that may have overcome
this...but I'm not sure which ones.
Cordially,
Ronnie Wong
Host, ITProTV
ps. don't forget to up vote...Don and I are in a contest! :)

Don,
Thanks so much for the detailed explanation and the practical example. I'll be using it in the field. We discovered a wing of our building's ethernet drops had been mislabeled by a contractor after a renovation project. I actually think they made up the labels after they plugged everything straight it to switches without a punch down panel. Sloppy. This is really helpful for making it right!
Thanks,
Mike

I couldn't get the video to stop and return to the beginning for me, so I replaced it with a new render. It should play just fine now.
Nathan Copeland
ITProTV

The short answer is no. Dedicated routers are becoming increasingly more rare in production environments. A lot of small office / home office deployments now use their firewalls as a router. Almost every firewall is capable of routing (transparent firewalls being the exception) so having a second device is redundant. In MPLS networks it is not uncommon to see a Layer 3 switch used as the router. However, in environments where you need to do media conversions you will still require a dedicated router. So if you are deploying frame-Relay, T1, E1, ISDN, or other serial based communications you will need a router as you don't typically find those interfaces on firewalls and switches.
Hope that helps,
Don

Greg,
We're filming it right now!
Cordially,
Ronald Wong
Host, ITProTV

Erik,
We were updating some files, hopefully the change has been corrected. Please feel free to open a support ticket with us that may get a response faster than the Q and A on the technical side of things. Thanks for watching!
Cordially,
Ronnie Wong
Host, ITPro.TV

Ok, thank you. So CompTIA now call out seven phases but used to call out six. In the episode, Don and Wes said previous exams had called out seven phases but now called out eight. I guess they simply misspoke. Like your comment here, they said that processing was the phase added in this exam.

Have you tried Clonezilla? we use it often to transfer images to vm session without issues.

Very interesting I knew about mapping static ARP entries but that is an actual use for it :-)
Oddly enough on my Win 8.1 laptop it didn't work. May have been the camera since it already had a different IP on my network as well so I'm not sure what caused me to not connect.
The real weird issue to me though is when I ran arp -d to delete it if you ran verbose arp -av it showed it didn't actually delete it but rather filled the MAC with all 0's and kept it in the table so I ended up getting odd errors and just gave up.

You see this a lot with broadband connections. You are most likely getting NAT'ed on your way through the router, but the cable modem has an entry allowing connections from the IP (or MAC address) of your router. Routers like this typically only have two routes in their routing table. For example, let's assume you are using 192.168.0.0/24 on your internal network. Here's the two routes your router likely has:
192.168.0.0/24 -> Inside ethernet ports
0.0.0.0/0 -> Outside ethernet port
So, even traffic to private IP ranges (10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12 and 192.168.0.0/16) will get routed out to the external interface with the exception of whatever private range you are using for your internal network. After that, the cable company likely adds a rule that allows any connection to the modem if it is initiated from the inside interface. The outside interface would generally be secured.
I hope that makes sense. A picture would probably explain it better. Let me know if that doesn't answer your question and I'll draw one up.
Thanks,
Don

Just recently we performed an overhaul on our A+ episodes and it appears a section got left off on that episode. That particular episode has been fixed. Simply navigate over to it and it'll have the first segment in there. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Nathan Copeland
ITProTV

Hi John,
Funny story about A+ episode ten. I was the guy operating our TriCaster video switcher that day. I made so many errors switching cameras and input sources that quite a bit of editing was needed to make the episode watchable. I didn't want to slow down production, so episode ten sat on the back burner while new content was produced. End the end we decided to abandon episode ten and redo it with a new episode number.
One day I may get around to editing Episode 10: The Lost Episode.
Nathan Copeland
ITProTV

Paul,
I'm now tracking what you're saying. If the 1Gbit was a theoretical limitation, the achievable saturation of fiber optics would be limited to light interference and heat. Put differently, external sources of light, cable imperfections will affect this limitation and the "melting point" of the fiber cabling itself. In a similar manner, copper cabling is limited by EMI and heat as well. So can we achieve better saturation in fiber optics? We can send more signal at one time over fiber optics, we have more saturation (i.e closer to the max).

Cordially,
Ronnie Wong
ITProTV

I had an old gateway PC that had a locked BIOS. I was able to find the model of the board and try to flash its non OEM BIOS. It didn't work in my case and I wouldn't suggest it as you could destroy any chance of it booting again. But I like to tinker with stuff like that now and then.

You're right about the form factors being reused RJ45 and similar is used in other applications as well.
Think about DB9 as the form factor of the connector. The physical style of it, and the pin count and stuff like that. RS232 would describe the communication used very commonly in the DB9 or DB25 connector.

Sorry, I forgot to come back and reply. I have a Gigabyte motherboard. I called them up and their support team told me exactly what you said. The cards will step down to x8. Thanks for your help.