15 Common Networking Terms That You Need To Know!

Computer networking is full of different terms. If you’re an active computer and internet user, you are bound to come across many unknown terms every day. Some of the most common terms are decoded here for you.

1. ISP

ISP is Internet Service Provider, it’s the company that provides you internet service. For example, your ISP can be BSNL, Airtel, Tata, Reliance, Tikona, You Broadband etc. It’s the company that you pay for internet services.

2. LAN

LAN stands for Local Area Network. As name suggests, it is limited to local area, which can be your home network, office network. LAN connections are used to improve efficiency at the work.

3. WAN

WAN stands for Wide Area Network, this type of network covers larger area. For example, your ISP has WAN network, you are part of ISP’s WAN network.

4. IP

IP is Internet Protocol address. It is unique numerical address of your computer on the network. IP address differs from computer to computer.

5. Router

A router is a device that passes network traffic. Passing on going traffic from connected devices to the internet and vice versa is the router’s job.

6. Gateway

Gateway is used to route the traffic in networks. For example, home router acts as gateway between LAN and WAN.

7. Hostname

A hostname is human readable label that is associated with device on the network. For example, other devices on your home network can connect to your primary PC using it’s hostname. In this case, devices will be pointed to PC’s IP address.

8. Domain Name

Internet domain name is base name for websites. Domain names are type of hostname.
When you type facebook.com in web browser, your computer contacts DSN server of Facebook, it replies with IP address of Facebook, your PC gets connected to the facebook’s server. Domain name is the medium that computers use to convert human readable domain names and hostnames to IP address. You use ISP’s DNS server to surf Internet, but you can always use third party DNS servers if you want to.

9. Ethernet

Ethernet is standard wire used in networking. The cable is used in Ethernet port on computer. It’s the medium using which computer is connected to a network.

10. Network Interface / Network Adapter

Wired Ethernet connection or WiFi are just network interfaces. Each network interface has unique IP address. Network interfaces can be entirely in software, they don't necessarily be corresponding to hardware devices every time.

11. localhost

localhost is the hostname which corresponds to your device. This uses loopback network interface to connect directly to your PC. localhost points to the IPv4 address 127.0.0.1 or the IPv6 address ::1.

12. MAC

MAC address stands for Media Access Control address, which is known as physical address. This is a unique identifier. MAC addresses are assigned by manufacturer while creating the network device.

For example, in an airport, you will be refused to access free WiFi after first free 30 minutes get over. The airport’s WiFi network notes your device’s MAC address, using which they track your device in order to prevent you from taking advantage of more free minutes of the service.

MAC address is not the most secured networking option. You can easily change your device’s MAC address.

13. Firewall

A firewall is a software or hardware which is used to block certain type of traffic. It can be used to block incoming traffic from specific IP address.

14. HTTP

HTTP stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol, this is the standard protocol used in all web browsers. There are other alternative protocols like FTP, BitTorrent which are used to communicate on network.

15. URL

URL is Uniform Resource Locator, it is also known as a web address. For example, htttp://google.com/image-search guides your computer to use hypertext transfer protocol to connect to DSN of google.com and look for file named image-search in root directory.

Resource: efytimes.com

Tricks Will Make You Pro Googler!

Google is powerful social media tool. Mastering Google is must if you want to master in social media. You can find the best results faster using few tricks. Many of Google’s search operators are unknown to lot of people. 

1) Quotation marks

This is the most basic trick to search an exact phrase. For example if you search “Hello World” then you will get results of pages that contain “Hello” followed by “World.” The same method works for exact word queries as well. Like, if you search for boat, google will show results for pages that contain words “boating, boat club, boat resort etc.” but if you use “boat” in quotation marks then google will show results that contain the specific word “boat” only.

2) Minus sign 

Using minus sign in phrase allows to specify to exclude results that include that word.
For example, if you’re looking for pages about mobile development and you want to avoid “android”, you can use this term : mobile development -android

3) Site

Using “site:” operator performs a search in particular site only.
Like, “site:efytimes.com windows phone 11”
This will show results only from efytimes.com

4) Tilde

This operator acts opposite of enclosing single word in quotes. This operator searches for related words as well the word you typed in search box.

5) Asterisk

The asterisk (*) is used to match words.
For example, if you want to use how much money google invested in other companies, you can use this syntax -
“google invested * dollars * in * ”

6) File type

This operator enables the users to find files of particular type.
For example, you can search for only doc files.
filetype:doc Sample business plan

7) Definitions 

You can search for definitions using google. The trick is simple.
You can use “define:xyz” to find definition of xyz.
For example, “define:science” will give you definition of science.

8) Unit conversion

This feature lets users convert between units. Just typing “X [units] in [units]” is sufficient.

For example, “5 miles in kilometres” will show you conversion of 5 miles to kilometres.

9) Calculator

You can use google for simple calculations. This saves time of pulling calculator app to perform mathematical operations. User can use +, -, * and / symbols to specify operations. Use of brackets is also allowed.
For example, “( 3 - 1 ) * 10 + 6 “ should give you exact answer.

Source: EFYTimes

Linux Terminal Emulator Keyboard Shortcuts

• Shift + Ctrl + W : Closing a Terminal
• Shift + Ctrl + Q : Closing Window
• Shift + Ctrl + C : Copy
• Shift + Ctrl + V : Paste
• F11 : Full Screen
• Shift + Ctrl + O : Splitting Horizontally
• Shift + Ctrl + E : Splitting Vertically
• Ctrl + Tab : Cycle
• Alt + Down : Move Down
• Alt + Up : Move Up
• Alt + Left : Move Left
• Alt + Right : Move Right
• Shift + Ctrl + Up : Resize Up
• Shift + Ctrl + Down : Resize Down
• Shift + Ctrl + Left : Resize Left
• Shift + Ctrl + Right : Resize Right
• Ctrl and + : Zoom In
• Ctrl + 0 : Zoom Standard
• Ctrl + - : Zoom Out
• Shift + Ctrl + T : Create New Tab
• Shift + Ctrl + Page Up : Switch Tab Left
• Shift + Ctrl + Page Down : Switch Tab Right

7 Free EDA Tools That All Eletronics Engineers Should Know!

Electronic Design and Automation is often the most important step in a project. It aids in laying the ground work before putting ideas to practical applications. Here are the tools that aid you in EDA.

1. gEDA project
The gEDA project has produced a GPL'd toolkit of Electronic Design Automation tools. These tools are used for electrical circuit design, schematic capture, simulation, prototyping, and production. The gEDA project offers a mature suite of free software applications for electronics design, including schematic capture, attribute management, bill of materials (BOM) generation, netlisting into over 20 netlist formats, analog and digital simulation, and printed circuit board (PCB) layout.

2. Fritzing
Fritzing is essentially Electronic Design Automation software with a low entry barrier, suited for the needs of designers and artists. It uses the metaphor of the breadboard, so that it is easy to transfer your hardware sketch to the software. From there it is possible to create PCB layouts for turning it into a robust PCB yourself or by help of a manufacturer.

3. KiCad
KiCad is an EDA software suite for the creation of professional schematics and printed circuit boards up to 16 layers. KiCad runs on Windows, Linux and Apple OS X and is released under the open-source GNU GPL v2 free of charge.

4. Magic VLSI
Magic is a venerable VLSI layout tool, written in the 1980's at Berkeley by John Ousterhout, now famous primarily for writing the scripting interpreter language Tcl. Due largely in part to its liberal Berkeley open-source license, Magic has remained popular with universities and small companies.

5. KTechLab
KTechlab is an IDE for microcontrollers and electronics. It provides debugging for a PIC program simulated in a circuit, FlowCode and example circuits.

6. Electric
the Electric VLSI Design System is an open-source Electronic Design Automation (EDA) system that can handle many forms of circuit design, including custom IC layout, textual languages and schematic capture. 

Source: EFYTimes.com

Here Are Some Open Source Tools For Artificial Intelligence!

Artificial intelligence is one of the most innovative and adventurous aspects of science. While some say it is far fetched, a mechanical being with the same amount of intelligence as a human is definitely a real possibility. So, how does one design an AI? Well, for starters, they use the following software.

1. OpenCog

OpenCog is an open-source software project aimed at directly confronting the AGI challenge, using mathematical and biological inspiration and professional software engineering techniques.

2. AForge.NET

AForge.NET is a C# framework designed for developers and researchers in the fields of Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence - image processing, neural networks, genetic algorithms, machine learning, robotics, etc.

3. OpenCV

OpenCV was designed for computational efficiency and with a strong focus on real-time applications. Written in optimized C/C++, the library can take advantage of multi-core processing. Enabled with OpenCL, it can take advantage of the hardware acceleration of the underlying heterogeneous compute platform. It works on Windows, Mac OS, iOS, Linux and Android operating systems.

4. R programming language

R is a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics. It compiles and runs on a wide variety of UNIX platforms, Windows and MacOS.

5. TREX

Aspects of TM problem solving to which AI techniques may be applied are analysed, AI techniques appropriate to the TM problem domain are selected and a texture rendering expert system (TReX) architecture developed. A new approach to TM based on TReX, called Intelligent Mapping, is proposed.

6. ROS

ROS (Robot Operating System) provides libraries and tools to help software developers create robot applications. It provides hardware abstraction, device drivers, libraries, visualizers, message-passing, package management, and more. ROS is licensed under an open source, BSD license.

7. Archimedes (CAD)

Archimedes is a free and open source CAD (Computer Aided Design) software. It is a robust system built over Eclipse's Rich Client Platform fully based on plug ins. This means it is easily extensible but also has a pretty thin core that allows you to select the features you need and drop the other ones easily.

8. Art of Illusion

Art of Illusion is a free, open source 3D modelling and rendering studio. Many of its capabilities rival those found in commercial programs. Highlights include subdivision surface based modelling tools, skeleton based animation, and a graphical language for designing procedural textures and materials.

9. AutoQ3D Community

AutoQ3D CAD work space helps you to make drawing and designs easier and faster. The tools are arranged and available for easy access. 

Source: EFYTimes News

Make Ubuntu 14.04 Look Like Mac With Zukimac Theme

Ubuntu Unity itself is a beautiful desktop but people over the world are smitten by the looks of Mac OS X. If you are among one of those, you don’t need to ditch Ubuntu just for the sake of OS X looks. Instead you can give it a makeover and make Ubuntu 14.04 look like Mac OS X.

Make Ubuntu 14.04 look like Mac OS X

To give Ubuntu a makeover of Mac, we shall be using Zukimac theme.

• Get Zukimac theme from the link below:
  Download Zukimac Theme for Ubuntu 14.04

• Extract the downloaded zipped file. You will find two directories in there, Zukimac and Zukimac-ml. Copy these to .themes directory in your home directory. Go to Home and press Ctrl+H to show all the hidden folders. If there is no .themes folder here, create one.
• Use Unity Tweak Tool to change the theme.

That’s it. Zukimac gives some a basic look and feel of Mac OS. Here is what it looks like with default OS X Maveric wallpaper.

Further changes to get Mac feel in Ubuntu 14.04

Additionally, you can install a dock launcher like Plank or Docky. To install Plank in Ubuntu 14.04 use the commands below:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ricotz/docky

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install plank

Along with the dock launcher, you can also install Synapse indicator as an alternative of Mac Spotlight. Use the following PPA from Noobslabs to install Synapse indicator:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:noobslab/apps

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install indicator-synapse

Apart from these two, you can also install Slingscold launcher, alternative of Mac OS X launchpad. Use the same Noobslabs PPA as mentioned above to install Slingscold launcher in Ubuntu 14.04:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:noobslab/apps

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install slingscold

Honestly, I am an avid Ubuntu fan and I like Ubuntu’s default Unity looks. In addition, there are plenty of beautiful icon themes in Ubuntu 14.04 to beautify it. But as I mentioned before there are plenty of people who like Mac OS X and I hope this tutorial helped them to make Ubuntu 14.04 look and feel like Mac OS X.

Source:http://itsfoss.com/