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Welcome

This is your one-stop shop for lab notes, slides and other content for this course. Slides are available to view directly in your browser and PDF versions of the same are available to download.

About this course

This course is aimed at introducing you to core networking concepts and implementations through a blend of theory and hands-on practical activities.

The course assumes basic computer literacy, some familiarity with file system and operating system concepts. Familiarity with the Linux operating system is not strictly expected, but the ability to run simple bash commands and edit text files in a command line interface will come in handy.

Course Goals

  • Explore key networking concepts through hands-on practical activities
  • Learn to use networking tools to configure network devices and services for basic inter-network connectivity and analyse network traffic moving across the network

Methodology

Learning in this course is lab-led. Each topic is introduced through a series of exploratory practical activities and this is followed by a discussion of relevant concepts and protocols.

Tools

The course relies on GNS3, a network emulation software, to design and configure network topologies of increasing complexity.

See the GNS3 section for details on how to set up your lab environment.

The following tools are required:

  • a GNS3 server: either provisioned in the cloud or installed locally on your machine
  • a GNS3 GUI: a.k.a GNS3 client. It can talk to both local and remote GNS3 servers.
  • Wireshark: a network analysis and debugging tool
  • Python3: for generating lab reports