Take a Free Networking Class From Stanford

New submitter philip.levis writes "Nick McKeown and I are offering a free, online class on computer networking. We're professors of computer science and electrical engineering at Stanford and are also co-teaching Stanford's networking course this quarter. The free, online class will run about six weeks and is intended to be accessible to people who don't program: the prerequisites are an understanding of probability, bits and bytes, and how computers lay out memory. Given how important the Internet is, we think a more accessible course on the principles and practice of computer networks could be a very valuable educational resource. I'm sure many Slashdot readers will already know much of what we'll cover, but for those who don't, here's an opportunity to learn!"

Comments

IPv6

[AK Marc]

Just a quick glance at the syllabus, and I didn't see anything about IPv6, if IPv6 gets deployed in the next 4 years, wouldn't that make the intro course essentially obsolete before anyone finished a degree? Remember, this is the year of IPv6 on the desktop.

Re:IPv6

[rogueippacket]

I would agree with you if it were a 12 or 16 week course - but there is a lot to talk about in terms of the physical and data link layers and plain IPv4 before even addressing IPv6. Six weeks is barely enough time to provide a solid foundation there.

Re:IPv6

[kasperd]

it might well make sense for an introductory course to concentrate on a more simple model that beginners can more easily understand.

In that case teach IPv6 and skip the parts that nobody use. IPv6 is a little bit simpler than IPv4. There is not a huge difference, but there is certainly no point in teaching an obsolete technology for simplicity, when it isn't simpler. IPv4 is not entirely obsolete yet, but judging from the number of people who think IPv6 is more complicated than IPv4, I perceive that there must be a shortage of people who understand IPv6.

Re:IPv6

[kasperd]

there is a lot to talk about in terms of the physical and data link layers and plain IPv4 before even addressing IPv6.

It would be better to teach plain IPv6 before you start addressing IPv4.

Re:Excellent idea, but...

[DamonHD]

Probability should be taught early on at school, not waiting for university!

Rgds

Damon

Re:Excellent idea, but...

[philip.levis]

Talking about packet formats is difficult if the student doesn't understand the idea of bits, bytes, and memory addresses. How memory is laid out isn't mean to imply segments, pages, virtual memory, caches, registers, or anything like that, just the idea that you have cells of bytes.

Looking forward, I agree with you -- it would not be hard to figure out how to present some background material on these topics to make the course more accessible. But this is just the first time we're teaching it. We'll learn and adjust the content appropriately. For this first time, though, we didn't want to venture too far from what we're used to teaching. It's enough of a change to move from live lectures to recorded videos and handle all of the structural differences in an online course.

Do NOT skip layer 2.

[AlphaWolf_HK]

I disagree. If you don't learn much of the layer 2 concepts, then you'll probably never learn anything about layer 2 troubleshooting. One time I had to work on a network where they had separate discontiguous VLANs that couldn't talk to one another. I remember a while back hearing about a major hospital whose network failed because their engineers didn't understand some of the more advanced layer 2 concepts. There are also issues such as implementing measures preventing some idiot from creating switching loops that STP can't detect, e.g. cascading some $10 switches they found at wal-mart which are creating a layer 2 broadcast storm that is bringing down an entire VLAN.

Troubleshooting isn't the only thing, you also won't understand layer 2 security, which has been exploited quite a bit lately. Some easy examples would be MAC flooding and MAC spoofing, to the more severe problems like VLAN hopping, and much more that I can't think of off of the top of my head.