Networking Fundamentals
Start from nothing and finish able to read a routing table, segment a LAN with VLANs, run DHCP and DNS, and control traffic with NAT and access lists. Every concept is followed by a real network you configure yourself.
By the end you will be able to
- Explain what a network is and what each device on it does
- Place a device, an address or a fault at the right layer of the model
- Read an IPv4 address and subnet mask, and calculate a subnet under exam conditions
- Diagnose why a host can reach its neighbours but not the internet
- Read a routing table and add a static route that fixes reachability
- Explain why static routing stops scaling, and bring up OSPF instead
- Separate a flat LAN into VLANs, and carry them between switches over a trunk
- Explain how DHCP and DNS work, and diagnose them when they do not
- Translate addresses with NAT, and control traffic with an access list
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Modules
- 01
Networking Basics
What a network actually is, the three devices you will meet in every lab, and a method for finding a fault rather than guessing at one.
5 activities~42 min - 02
Layers and Protocols
The vocabulary everything else in this path assumes - which layer a thing belongs to, what changes as a packet crosses a router, and how a port number picks an application.
4 activities~32 min - 03
IPv4 Addressing
Addresses, masks, the arithmetic people actually fail, and the single most common beginner fault - a host that can reach its neighbours but nothing beyond them.
6 activities~63 min - 04
Static Routing
How a router decides where to send a packet, and how to tell it about a network it cannot see for itself.
5 activities~69 min - 05
Dynamic Routing - First Steps
Why nobody runs a real network on static routes, and what a routing protocol does instead.
2 activities~34 min - 06
Switching and VLANs
Everything below the routing you have been doing - how a switch learns, how a VLAN splits one switch into several, and how VLANs cross between switches.
11 activities~188 min - 07
Network Services - DHCP and DNS
The two services every network runs, how they work, and how to tell which of them is actually broken.
6 activities~89 min - 08
IPv6 Addressing
The same ideas in the other address family - notation, prefixes, the several addresses one interface holds, and routing between them.
4 activities~48 min - 09
NAT and Access Control
How private networks reach the internet, how a server is published back out, and how to control what may talk to what.
8 activities~150 min
Curriculum topics
- Routing
- Switching
- Services
- Security
- Subnetting
- Troubleshooting
- Fundamentals
- IPv4
- Static Routing
- OSPF
- IPv6
- Addressing
Each topic page lists every lesson, quiz and hands-on lab that covers it, plus how it maps onto the CCNA and Network+ blueprints.