Networking Fundamentals

Description: Networking is easily one of the most commonly recommended topics to learn for anyone interested in being in an IT career, and so it's arguably one of the most important skills to build when starting out. Regardless of what job you end up choosing, having at least a foundational understanding of how data travels all around us is very beneficial. So in this course, we're going to learn just that starting with how data travels using physical connections. But physical connections alone aren't enough to make the internet work. We also need to answer questions like: how does data know exactly where to go? Say I'm sending an email to someone - how does that email know to go to that other person's inbox, and no one else's? Or even reading this right now. How did you receive this text and the images on this page that are stored in a different part of the world than where you're located? How does all of it transfer in seconds or even milliseconds? These are fascinating questions that can be answered once we understand how the physical and virtual backbone of the Internet works. Once we understand how human-readable information gets transformed into a format that machines can process, and then back into a human-readable format again. Once we understand how models and standards were created to dictate a set of rules for how devices should communicate. Once we look at all of that, and more, then we start to see how everything is interconnected and how the Internet is able to function the way it does. Join us as we unpack the mysteries of networking and learn Networking Fundamentals that you'll be able to carry with you throughout your entire IT career!