You Aren't A Crutch: You Can't Save People Who Won't Save Themselves

No matter who you are or what your situation is, your life is going to be a struggle. Some struggle more than others and in different ways, but in the end, we all struggle to live.


It's the true reason human beings need each other -- because without one another to rely on, most of us wouldn’t make it. Arguably, none of us would. People need other people in their lives, and good people are always willing to help friends in need.

The problem is understanding what will help -- and what won’t -- can often be difficult. More often than not, a helping hand turns into a crutch. While crutches are sometimes necessary, relying on them for too long weakens you.



Not using your legs for so long only means you’ll find it much harder when you finally have to.

When we find ourselves in tough situations, we take whatever help we can get. The problem is we often take more than we ought to; it’s human nature. So if you’re the one helping your friend get back on his feet, you need to make sure you help him in a way that actually helps him.

Being supportive is helping someone help himself -- being someone’s crutch is helping him as if he couldn’t help himself.

I believe you should do your best to rely on other people as little as possible. While some might differ, it's what I believe. If you can avoid relying on someone, you’re better off doing so.

My belief doesn’t stem from the thought people shouldn’t be trusted, or we should do our best to live our lives in solitude. Instead, at any moment in your life, you may find you relied on the wrong people. It happens. When it does, you’re the one who ends up paying for it.


Sometimes, however, we have no choice but to ask for a helping hand. Sometimes we’re hanging off the side of a cliff and find our arms are too weak to hold on to the cliffside. It’s moments like this you'll be glad you have someone in your life you can rely on.

It also may be times like this when you’re glad you hadn’t been asking for handouts the entire time. People aren’t so willing to help those always looking for help.

Being a crutch is a full-time job -- and it only gets more demanding as time goes on.

In the book "Toxic Charity" by Robert D. Lupton, the author does charity work for decades and compiles his findings and observations.

After years of charity work, he realizes how useless and even counterproductive traditional charity actually is. Instead of helping people, traditional charity ends up leaving them worse off -- always.

Lupton found giving people handouts only led to them wanting more handouts. And over time, people learn to expect such handouts as if they were entitled to them, fully relying on them for their livelihood with no plans for making life changes.

If people can avoid doing work to get what they need in life; they will. If you decide to become someone’s crutch, you may very well find that person sucking you dry. It’s human nature.


People will never change the way they're living unless they feel they have to.

Being supportive allows you to help your friend become the person he deserves to be.

What Lupton did find, however, is allowing and teaching people to help themselves did make it possible for a lasting, positive change to take place. As the adage says...

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.
This is where you come in. When your friends or even family members come to you for help, don’t help them by trying to fix their lives or their situations. All this will do is put a Band-Aid on a wound that needs better medical attention.

The only way to help people is by helping them help themselves, by helping them understand how they can best get out of their situation and stay out of their situation.

Real change only occurs when the way we see the world, the way we see ourselves, and the way we see our future, changes. Such changes are difficult to make because they often require a complete overhaul of our current reality.


Thankfully, your friends have you in their lives to support them and help them get their lives on track. By being your friend’s crutch, you’re only ensuring their continued failure.

The only way to help the people you love is by showing them how strong and intelligent they are, and how much potential they possess.

Most people don’t fail because they don’t have it in them to succeed. On the contrary, most people fail because they honestly believe they aren’t capable of succeeding. People who succeed don’t succeed by accident; they succeed because they know in their minds their success is inevitable.

These individuals aren’t gypsies with the ability to see the future. The only thing that truly differentiates them from the rest of the herd is their ability to create the future.

And the only way to create a beautiful future is by first seeing it in your mind. Michelangelo saw David in the stone and released him.

You need to know the life you wish for if you hope to have it. More than that, you have to believe your ideal life is a possibility -- a good possibility. It isn’t always easy to have such strong belief in yourself. How can you believe you'll succeed -- truly believe it -- if life has proven you wrong time and time again?

As a friend, it’s your job to remind, convince even, your friends the lives they've always dreamed of are lives they can one day live. This is really all the support anyone needs.

Nearly all people can take care of themselves -- what most people really need is a reminder they could be great if they choose to.

Do you have true friendships? Aristotle thinks you don't

Name your five closest friends, I’ll wait. Think of the people you can talk to about anything, the ones you’ve known for a while, the ones you can always call. Now, think of how many people on Facebook you can really say are anything like that group. We all still have a guy from high school on our Facebook that we don’t think about until his birthday.

Dunbar’s number, the supposed maximum number of meaningful social relationships you can have, is 150. The median Facebook user has a much higher number of friends than that, how many of them are really people you still know? How many of them are people who you would want to see for no other reason than that you enjoy their presence?

How many of your friends are really your “friends”? How can you know the difference? What is that difference?

In his ethical masterpiece The Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle turns his brilliant mind to the problem of what friendship actually is. Aristotle views the good life as requiring not only virtue, an internal good that you are largely responsible for; but also requiring external goods which facilitate virtue and are enjoyable in themselves. Such things include being Greek, male, well-off financially, educated, reasonably healthy, having decent luck, and having good friends. The question of what a friend is takes on a new importance for him.

In book VIII of this work he defines three sorts of friendships, and one virtue of friendship, “Philia” or brotherly love. As with all of Aristotle’s virtues, Philia is the midway point between two vices. A lack of brotherly love leads to the vice of egoism, while the person who is too friendly with everyone is also vicious in their own way. Aristotle would agree that “The friend to all is a friend to none”. To be a self-actualized person, in the Aristotelian sense, you need to master the art of friendship.

But, what are the three kinds of friendships?

The friendship of utility is the first kind of friendship Aristotle covers. These friendships are based on what the two people involved can do for one another, and often have little to do with the other individual as a person at all. The person you buy a drink for so they can score you tickets, put in a good word for you, or even just make you look better by comparison. Such friendships as this include offering hospitality, so he claims. These friendships can end rapidly, as soon as any possible use for the other person is gone.

The second is the friendship of pleasure. These are the friendships based on enjoyment of a shared activity and the pursuit of fleeting pleasures and emotions. The person you drink with but would never have over for dinner. The guy who you go to a football game with but would never be able to tolerate seeing anywhere else. Aristotle declares it to be the friendship of the young. This is, again, an often-short tenured friendship as people may change what they like to do and suddenly be without connection their friend.

In both of these friendships the other person is not being valued “in themselves” but as a means to an end. Pleasure in one and to some useful thing in the other. While these are listed as “lesser” friendships due to the motive, Aristotle is open to the idea of the final, and greatest, form of friendship finding its genesis in these categories, however. 

The final category is “True” friendship. The friendship of virtue or the friendship of “the good”. These are the people you like for themselves, the people who push you to be a better person. The motivation is that you care for the person themselves and therefore the relationship is much more stable than the previous two categories. These friendships are hard to find because people who make the cut of "virtuous" are hard to find. Aristotle laments the rarity of such friendships, but notes they are possible between two virtuous people who can invest the time needed to create such a bond.

While Aristotle encourages us to seek the “pure” form of friendship. He doesn’t necessarily think you are a bad person for having friends of the previous two sorts. We all have them. While he admits that some pleasures are bad for you, he also calls pleasure a good which people do want to enjoy. The real problem in these friendships is when you fail to understand that they are of the lower kind and make no effort to find better friendships.

But, friendships of pleasure are all I have right now. Am I a bad person?
No, but Aristotelians would encourage you to move up. Start thinking about your friendships. Are there any friends who you think you'd like to know better? Do it! If it doesn’t work out, try again. Aristotle is clear: friendships of virtue are rare, it might take a while. Before anything can work, you need to be virtuous too. You needn’t be a paragon of virtue right away, even Ciceroquestioned how virtuous you needed to be to make true friends, but an understanding of Philia would be useful.

In a world of ever increasing social connections, the question of what friendship “really is” is an important one. The guidance of Aristotle, with his views of differing friendships and the possibility for improvement, are one much needed suggestion in our modern world.

Your smartphone📱is making you👈 stupid, antisocial 🙅 and unhealthy 😷.

A decade ago, smart devices promised to change the way we think and interact, and they have – but not by making us smarter. Eric Andrew-Geeexplores the growing body of scientific evidence that digital distraction is damaging our minds.

In the winter of 1906, the year San Francisco was destroyed by an earthquake and SOS became the international distress signal, Britain's Punch magazine published a dark joke about the future of technology.

Under the headline, "Forecasts for 1907," a black and white cartoon showed a well-dressed Edwardian couple sitting in a London park. The man and woman are turned away from each other, antennae protruding from their hats. In their laps are little black boxes, spitting out ticker tape.

A caption reads: "These two figures are not communicating with one another. The lady is receiving an amatory message, and the gentleman some racing results."

The cartoonist was going for broad humour, but today the image looks prophetic. A century after it was published, Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone. Today, thanks to him, we can sit in parks and not only receive amatory messages and racing results, but summon all the world's knowledge with a few taps of our thumbs, listen to virtually every song ever recorded and communicate instantaneously with everyone we know.

More than two billion people around the world, including three-quarters of Canadians, now have this magic at their fingertips – and it's changing the way we do countless things, from taking photos to summoning taxis. But smartphones have also changed us – changed our natures in elemental ways, reshaping the way we think and interact. For all their many conveniences, it is here, in the way they have changed not just industries or habits but people themselves, that the joke of the cartoon has started to show its dark side.

The evidence for this goes beyond the carping of Luddites. It's there, cold and hard, in a growing body of research by psychiatrists, neuroscientists, marketers and public health experts. What these people say – and what their research shows – is that smartphones are causing real damage to our minds and relationships, measurable in seconds shaved off the average attention span, reduced brain power, declines in work-life balance and hours less of family time.

They have impaired our ability to remember. They make it more difficult to daydream and think creatively. They make us more vulnerable to anxiety. They make parents ignore their children. And they are addictive, if not in the contested clinical sense then for all intents and purposes.

Consider this: In the first five years of the smartphone era, the proportion of Americans who said internet use interfered with their family time nearly tripled, from 11 per cent to 28 per cent. And this: Smartphone use takes about the same cognitive toll as losing a full night's sleep. In other words, they are making us worse at being alone and worse at being together.

Ten years into the smartphone experiment, we may be reaching a tipping point. Buoyed by mounting evidence and a growing chorus of tech-world jeremiahs, smartphone users are beginning to recognize the downside of the convenient little mini-computer we keep pressed against our thigh or cradled in our palm, not to mention buzzing on our bedside table while we sleep.

Nowhere is the dawning awareness of the problem with smartphones more acute than in the California idylls that created them. Last year, ex-employees of Google, Apple and Facebook, including former top executives, began raising the alarm about smartphones and social media apps, warning especially of their effects on children.

Chris Marcellino, who helped develop the iPhone's push notifications at Apple, told The Guardian last fall that smartphones hook people using the same neural pathways as gambling and drugs.

Sean Parker, ex-president of Facebook, recently admitted that the world-bestriding social media platform was designed to hook users with spurts of dopamine, a complicated neurotransmitter released when the brain expects a reward or accrues fresh knowledge. "You're exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology," he said. "[The inventors] understood this, consciously, and we did it anyway."

Peddling this addiction made Mr. Parker and his tech-world colleagues absurdly rich. Facebook is now valued at a little more than half a trillion dollars. Global revenue from smartphone sales reached $435-billion (U.S.).

Now, some of the early executives of these tech firms look on their success as tainted.

"I feel tremendous guilt," said Chamath Palihapitiya, former vice-president of user growth at Facebook, in a public talk in November. "I think we all knew in the back of our minds… something bad could happen.

"The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works," he went on gravely, before a hushed audience at Stanford business school. "It is eroding the core foundations of how people behave."

None of the Bay Area whistle-blowers have been louder than Tristan Harris, a former star product manager at Google. He has spent the past several years of his life telling people to use less of the technologies he helped create through a non-profit called Time Well Spent, which aims to raise awareness among consumers about the dangers of the attention economy, and pressure the tech world to design its products more ethically. Judging by the momentum his movement is suddenly building – he receives hundreds of requests for speaking engagements a month – his message is being heard.

Full article at > https://tinyurl.com/y8to33pb

10 Problems Only Smart People Have

Offer pretty much anyone in the world a pill that would instantly improve IQ, and most people would happily gobble it down. That's why the internet is full of articles and courseson how to get smarter, learn faster, and emulate geniuses.

But while being smarter sounds appealing, actually living everyday life as an extremely intelligent person can throw up some very real, but rarely acknowledged, challenges.

Not sure you believe me? Then take it from Stanford grad and successful entrepreneur Ramit Sethi. Having studied and worked side by side with some brilliant folks, he's noticed a few recurring patterns when it comes to the downsides of extreme intelligence. He outlined five in a blog post.

• They overintellectualize things. "Since [smart people] can see lots of angles -- in fact, they've been rewarded for seeing multiple angles -- they often can't accept what's in front of them," cautions Sethi. "This can be ideal when they're considering complex strategies or life decisions," he allows, but when shutting up and taking action is what is required, smart people can struggle.
• They're perfectionists. Perfectionism is "the smart person's version of Fear of Failure,"according to Sethi.
• They're afraid of looking stupid. This can drive some perverse behavior in kids labeled smart. After school is over the same fear can prevent clever adults from asking questions or learning something new, both of which might reveal their ignorance.
• They forget what it's like to be a beginner. "As you get more and more advanced in your career (or relationship or business or pretty much anything), it becomes harder and harder to relate to true beginners," Sethi warns.
• They want to skip the basics. Well, not if they're Elon Musk-level smart, but your garden-variety intelligent person does, at least in Sethi's experience. "Too many people think they're too advanced to perfect the fundamentals," he writes.

But if you want confirmation that being smart isn't all upside, you don't have to rely on personal observations like Sethi's. There is also plenty of hard science showing that while big brains create wonderful things for the world, they also often create real struggles for those in possession of them.

Smart people are more often alone.

A fascinating recent study found that compared with the less gifted, smart people tend to spend more time alone. Why? "Those with more intelligence and the capacity to use it ... are less likely to spend so much time socializing because they are focused on some other longer-term objective," Carol Graham, a Brookings Institution researcher who studies the economics of happiness, explained to the Washington Post.

There's a silver lining for the exceptionally smart, however. While science suggests that they're likely to be less socially connected than others, it also suggests that this lack of human contact will impact their happiness less. So while you're more likely to be a loner if you're highly intelligent, that lifestyle is less likely to make you lonely -- presumably because you're too busy building a world-changing business or curing disease to be much bothered about missing bowling night.

They know how much they don't know.

Have you ever heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect? If you don't know the term, you definitely have experienced the principle. This psychological rule states that it's the most incompetent who are the most confident, while the most intelligent doubt their own abilities. Why? In short, dumb people are too dumb to understand exactly how dumb they are. Smart people are clever enough to know how much they don't know.

In real life this means it's actually the brightest who are often the most tormented by doubt and they're also the most likely to suffer from imposter syndrome.

They're more likely to fall prey to stereotypes.

We tend to think of those who fall prey to bias and stereotypes as, well, kind of dumb. But one recent study, at least, suggested the opposite. A team of researchers found that because smart people are better at quickly picking up subtle patterns, they're also more likely to pair certain characteristics with certain groups based on flimsy evidence.

Or, as the Atlantic put it in its write-up of the study's findings, "these depressing results suggest there's a downside to being smart--it makes you risk reading too much into a situation and drawing inappropriate conclusions."

They're more easily distracted.

If you find it hard to stay on task amid the hubbub off your office, I have good news for you -- that just might be a sign of your high intelligence and above-average creativity. "More intelligent people may be more distractible at work because they have trouble prioritizing all of the great ideas they're always coming up with, according to a new study," Money said, reporting on one 2016 survey of more than 10,000 workers.

Another recent study out of Northwestern University linked creative accomplishment with a reduced ability to ignore distractions. Or to use the researchers' more technical language: "Real-world creative achievement was associated with leaky sensory processing -- or a reduced ability to screen or inhibit stimuli from conscious awareness."

They're weighed down by expectations.

Having a great brain is wonderful, but having to deal with everyone else's expectations of the marvelous things you'll do with that brain? Maybe not so much. One study that tracked 1,500 super smart kids (their IQs tested at 140 or more) for decades found that many struggled to live up to their own and others' hopes for their lives.

When the study participants were in their 80s, researchers asked them to look back on their lives. "Rather than basking in their successes, many reported that they had been plagued by the sense that they had somehow failed to live up to their youthful expectations," reports the BBC. "That sense of burden -- particularly when combined with others' expectations -- is a recurring motif for many other gifted children."

10 Reasons You’re Stuck In A Life You Don’t Want To Be Living

Everyone says they want to live a great life, have healthy relationships and look and feel their best, but how many are willing to put in the work day-after-day? If you look around your life and listen to all of the whining you’ll soon find that most people are situated comfortably in their discomfort. If you are trying to break free but not sure why life isn’t moving forward, you may need to do a bit of an assessment.

Read on for 10 reasons you’re not happy with your life (and what to do about it).

1 | You complain about the same thing over and over (and over).

Here’s a rule: If you have complained about something three times, you need to accept it or change it yourself. Whether it’s your frustration with your weight, relationship or the way your colleague treats you, complaining should be taken as more than simply a momentary release of frustration; it’s a warning sign than you’re rejecting something in your life. Non-acceptance takes up a lot of energy and creates an internal and external toxic environment. If you have shared your unhappiness with someone and they have not worked with you to make things better, it means you need to make decisions that will help you get back to a place of peace. They may not be easy initially, but most of the time, we are not at the mercy of situations or other people unless we choose to be. We all have options.

2 | You tie yourself to people who bring you down.

Loyalty is something all healthy relationships need to have, but it can work against us when we confuse it with being a good person, love or even habit. Being loyal to someone who does not reciprocate, holds you back from progressing or who is participating in situations that go against our value system is truly one of the most self-destructive things we can do. It’s OK to assess your relationships and let go of the ones that no longer fit who you are. The idea that every relationship has to last “for life” is a fantasy. Most will not and that is OK.

3 | You get caught up in stupid crap

Getting stuck on the little hooks of life will not only hold you back, it will irritate you and tear you apart. Does it really matter if the friend of a friend didn’t “like” your new job status or some acquaintance from college disagrees with your stance on breastfeeding? Do you really care what your neighbor thinks about your not having kids? Remember that you are living your own life and stay focused on what matters most to you. Keep your eyes on your goals, stay true to your own values and don’t allow yourself to get sidetracked by trolls and people who care more about being “right” than being decent.

4 | You don’t draw a line on the spot.

Back in the day, I was one of those women who believed that biting my tongue when someone insulted, upset or offended me made me “nice” or showed “decorum”. The reality was that it made me feel terrible, I was treated as a pushover and there are plenty of ways to stand up for yourself without looking like you belong on a reality show. Once I started saying things like “don’t speak to me like that again” or “I am sure you don’t realize how you’re coming across, but I am finding it very aggressive” or simply staying silent, my life changed. Not only did most people stop, many apologized, and guess what? They knew not to do it again. Yay for no drama and loads of self-respect!

5| You’re a martyr.

We live in a world where people love to show off how much they can achieve in a day-and then complain about how exhausted and unappreciated they are. The truth is we have 24 hours in a day and 7-8 need to be for sleep and a few need to be for you. I don’t care what is going on in your life, a person who doesn’t take a few minutes to connect with themselves and take a few deep breaths is going to be bitter, angry and resentful quite a few moments each day. These small moments will add up and corrode your happiness and seep out in ways you never expected. You are not a superhero or a saint. You’re a human being who needs food, shelter, water, spiritual nourishment, mental stimulation, affection and an identity that stems beyond what you do and what other people call you. Only give what you can while still making time to take care of yourself and ask for what you need to make that possible.

6 | You’re not willing to do the work.

This is such a big one. If you don’t do what you need to do, you’ll never get what you want. Even if, by some stretch, you prove me wrong and someone hands it all to you, you won’t keep it. While life can throw us curveballs, the truth is most people are not willing to do the work it takes to achieve what they want. We don’t always like to hear it, but the reality is that, if you want something, it is your responsibility to do the research, reach out, ask for advice, sharpen your skills and make the effort. Those who work hard and smart tend to find a version of what they are looking for (or something better) whereas those who stand there with their proverbial hand out spewing out wishes and whining they are unlucky are guaranteed to go nowhere.

7 | You’re rude.

There are some people who mistake snarky for clever and others who just straight-up hate. They rarely get emails about job opportunities, invites to birthday parties and have loads of drama in their friendships. Guess why? Nobody likes them.

8 | You don’t make the effort.

We all have busy lives and things to do, but when you can’t be bothered to show up for someone’s birthday (every year) and think a text is an appropriate of sharing your condolences to a “dear” friend who has suffered a loss, you send the message that you don’t care. Do this enough and your friends will hear the message loud and clear and respond accordingly.

9 | You take more than you give.

Doing things for people we care about is one of the joys in having relationships, but when you’re constantly giving to someone without ever being on the receiving end, it gets draining. Worse, if you’re more concerned with what you want than what the person in front of you needs, there’s a massive issue. Say you’re sorry when you need to and let the friend who has just been hit with hard news have a few days before you ask them to do you a favor.

10 | You’re afraid.

Here’s an undeniable truth: fear is a very real part of life, but unless we learn how to manage it and move through it, we will stay paralyzed in situations we don’t want to be in instead of moving forward to something better. To have a full, complete and authentic life, you are going to need to take risks. The risk to speak up and out, to move on, to open your heart, to pack up and move to another country...and the list goes on. The good news is that most of what we worry about happening never does and confidence are built by making small efforts each and every day. One small act of courage can have a massive domino effect. Give it a try!

Brenda Della Casa is the owner of BDC Digital Media and the Founder of Badass + Living. She is also the Author of Cinderella Was a Liar, the former editor-in-chief and Digital Content Strategist at Preston Bailey Designs and a blogger for YourTango and Thrillist. Facebook: BrendaDellaCasa, Twitter: @BrendaDellaCasa, Instagram: @BrendaDellaCasa.

Follow Brenda Della Casa on Twitter: www.twitter.com/BrendaDellaCasa

The OSI model explained: How to understand (and remember) the 7 layer network model

When most non-technical people hear the term “seven layers”, they either think of the popular Super Bowl bean dip or they mistakenly think about the seven layers of Hell, courtesy of Dante’s Inferno (there are nine). For IT professionals, the seven layers refer to the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model, a conceptual framework that describes the functions of a networking or telecommunication system.

The model uses layers to help give a visual description of what is going on with a particular networking system. This can help network managers narrow down problems (Is it a physical issue or something with the application?), as well as computer programmers (when developing an application, which other layers does it need to work with?). Tech vendors selling new products will often refer to the OSI model to help customers understand which layer their products work with or whether it works “across the stack”.

Conceived in the 1970s when computer networking was taking off, two separate models were merged in 1983 and published in 1984 to create the OSI model that most people are familiar with today. Most descriptions of the OSI model go from top to bottom, with the numbers going from Layer 7 down to Layer 1. The layers, and what they represent, are as follows:

Layer 7 - Application

To further our bean dip analogy, the Application Layer is the one at the top - it’s what most users see. In the OSI model, this is the layer that is the “closest to the end user”. Applications that work at Layer 7 are the ones that users interact with directly. A web browser (Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc.) or other app - Skype, Outlook, Office - are examples of Layer 7 applications.

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Layer 6 - Presentation

The Presentation Layer represents the area that is independent of data representation at the application layer - in general, it represents the preparation or translation of application format to network format, or from network formatting to application format. In other words, the layer “presents” data for the application or the network. A good example of this is encryption and decryption of data for secure transmission - this happens at Layer 6.

Layer 5 - Session

When two devices, computers or servers need to “speak” with one another, a session needs to be created, and this is done at the Session Layer. Functions at this layer involve setup, coordination (how long should a system wait for a response, for example) and termination between the applications at each end of the session.

Layer 4 – Transport

The Transport Layer deals with the coordination of the data transfer between end systems and hosts. How much data to send, at what rate, where it goes, etc. The best known example of the Transport Layer is the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), which is built on top of the Internet Protocol (IP), commonly known as TCP/IP. TCP and UDP port numbers work at Layer 4, while IP addresses work at Layer 3, the Network Layer.

Layer 3 - Network

Here at the Network Layer is where you’ll find most of the router functionality that most networking professionals care about and love. In its most basic sense, this layer is responsible for packet forwarding, including routing through different routers. You might know that your Boston computer wants to connect to a server in California, but there are millions of different paths to take. Routers at this layer help do this efficiently.

Layer 2 – Data Link

The Data Link Layer provides node-to-node data transfer (between two directly connected nodes), and also handles error correction from the physical layer. Two sublayers exist here as well - the Media Access Control (MAC) layer and the Logical Link Control (LLC) layer. In the networking world, most switches operate at Layer 2.

Layer 1 - Physical

At the bottom of our OSI bean dip we have the Physical Layer, which represents the electrical and physical representation of the system. This can include everything from the cable type, radio frequency link (as in an 802.11 wireless systems), as well as the layout of pins, voltages and other physical requirements. When a networking problem occurs, many networking pros go right to the physical layer to check that all of the cables are properly connected and that the power plug hasn’t been pulled from the router, switch or computer, for example.

Why you need to know the 7 OSI layers

Most people in the IT space will likely need to know about the different layers when they’re going for their certifications, much like a civics student needs to learn about the three branches of the U.S. government. After that, you hear about the OSI model when vendors are making pitches about which layer(s) their products work with.

“The purpose of the OSI reference model is to guide vendors and developers so the digital communication products and software programs they create will interoperate, and to facilitate clear comparisons among communications tools.”

While some people may argue that the OSI model is obsolete (due to its theoretical nature and less important than the 4 layers of the TCP/IP model), Kumar says that “it is difficult to read about networking technology today without seeing references to the OSI model and its layers, because the model’s structure helps to frame discussions of protocols and contrast various technologies.”

If you can understand the OSI model and its layers, you can also then understand which protocols and devices can interoperate with each other when new technologies are developed and explained.

Remembering the OSI Model 7 layers – 8 mnemonic tricks

If you need to memorize the layers for a college or certification test, here are a few sentences to help remember them in order. The first letter of each word is the same as a layer of the OSI model.

Build Redundancy into Your LAN/WAN

These standards and practices will help you ensure that packets continue to flow

The server is down! The Internet is down! Systems administrators and network administrators would prefer never to hear these words—and after all, the words are seldom literally accurate. How often is an entire server destroyed? How often does the Internet suffer a global failure? Most system failures are the result of a single component failure. Your job is to find that component, fix it, and return the system to normal operation.

For crucial systems, you're always looking for ways to predict and reduce downtime. One approach is to analyze the system's communication path from servers to users and look for potential single points of failure—that is, individual system components that, when broken, can cause the unavailability of the entire system. After you identify potential single points of failure, your next challenge is to decide what to do about them. Because money is often a consideration, you undertake risk analysis—either formally or informally. A considered response often includes one or more of the following strategies:

• Do nothing. Either the risk is low or the cost of a fix is too high.
• Acquire cold spare parts. Cold spare parts are components that you can use to replace broken parts quickly. This strategy comes with moderate cost and risk and is appropriate when some downtime is acceptable.
• Acquire hot spare parts. Hot spare parts are redundant components that are running all the time, ready to take over for broken components in the system. Clustering, load balancing, and hot sites are all forms of such redundancy, depending on the part of a system that needs repair.

As a network administrator, you need to ensure that packets continue to flow. Often, redundant network connections are your best bet. In a network setting, you can use redundancy to provide fault tolerance and to increase communications capacity. To build reliable network communications paths, you need to understand how to implement redundant LAN and WAN connections. For information about the standards and protocols that enable the following redundancy scenarios, see the sidebar "A Glossary of Standards and Protocols Relevant to Redundant Networks," page 62.

Redundant LAN Connections
Sooner or later, you'll need to handle a system communication failure that occurs within a server's local subnet. The server's NIC and default gateway are both potential points of failure, but you can add redundancy in a variety of ways.

Multiple NICs on the same subnet. Whether your server system is standalone, clustered, or load-balanced, the NIC is a potential point of failure. Starting with Windows 2000, Microsoft simplified the installation of multiple NICs configured for the same IP subnet. To provide NIC redundancy, you can connect such NICs to the same hub or switch or preferably to different switches. The Interface metric property determines which of the active (i.e., enabled) NICs the system will use for outbound traffic; the system uses the NIC with the lowest number in the Interface metricfield. Go to Control Panel, Network and Dial-up Connections, Local Area Connection, Properties. Select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), and click Properties. On the General tab, click Advanced. Clear the Automatic Metric check box at the bottom of resulting dialog box, and enter the metric you want to assign to this NIC.

Multiple default gateways. A failure of the default gateway on the subnet will cause traffic to remote subnets to fail. Implementing multiple routers on the subnet provides a measure of fault tolerance to this kind of failure. The Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) and the Hot Standby Router Protocol (HSRP) support such fault tolerance without requiring configuration changes at the client. You can also implement multiple default gateways at each client by defining more than one default gateway address on each NIC. Starting with Win2K, Microsoft lets you assign a metric to a default gateway the same way that you assign a metric to a NIC.

In earlier versions of Windows, you can assign a metric to a default gateway by installing additional default gateways directly into the IP routing table. To make such routing table changes, you use the Route Add command with the metric option at a standard command prompt. For example, the command

route ­p add 0.0.0.0 mask 0.0.0.0 10.10.0.254 metric 15

adds a persistent default gateway for the router at 10.10.0.254 with a metric of 15. Understand that only connection-oriented traffic such as TCP will trigger a default gateway change; UDP and Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) traffic such as Ping won't. Defining different default gateways for different NICs in a multihomed computer can cause problems when the NICs connect to networks that can't communicate with one another. Even when default gateways are defined on different NICs, only one of a computer's default gateways is active at a time. For more information about configuring default gateways, see the Microsoft article "Default Gateway Configuration for Multihomed Computers" (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=157025).

The Internet Router Discovery Protocol (IRDP) is yet another way to handle dead-gateway detection. Routers that support IRDP use ICMP messages to advertise their presence. In Windows NT 4.0, Microsoft added IRDP support, which is disabled by default. You use registry modifications to enable IRDP individually for each NIC, as described in the Microsoft articles "Internet Router Discovery Protocol (IRDP) Client Support Added to Windows NT 4.0" (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=223756) and "Router Discovery Protocol Is Disabled by Default" (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=269734). After you enable IRDP, the protocol stack will listen for and request router advertisements and use them to set a default gateway.

Link aggregation. Several years ago, NIC vendors began to offer proprietary solutions to the single-NIC vulnerability. These solutions evolved into the IEEE 802.3ad Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) standard. LACP supports multiple parallel switch-to-switch and server-to-switch connections. You can use this standard—variously called NIC teaming, port bonding, and link aggregation—to configure LACP-based products for fault tolerance, increased bandwidth, and load balancing across parallel links.

Finish it off at > https://www.itprotoday.com/management-mobility/build-redundancy-your-lanwan

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