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TLDR: A good course full of valuable information delivered in an archaic and occasionally inaccessible way. I have mixed feelings about this course. On the one hand, it provides a very comprehensive overview of how networks operate and I have a much better understanding of the topic than before I started, which means that I have achieved my learning goals. It’s more than just a surface-level introduction, with a lot of focus on the protocols and technologies that work together to make networks possible. On the other hand, there’s a lot that I don’t like about the course delivery. It falls into the classic trap of thinking that an online course needs to consist only of one guy talking at a camera for hours, supported by text-wall infodumps presented as ‘supplemental reading’. The section on wireless networking was, frankly, a nightmare in this regard. Little or no effort is made to leverage the fact that this is an online course, not a course delivered in a classroom; there are few practical exercises, and no reappearance of the interactive learning environments from ‘technical support fundamentals’. Such practicals as there are (I can only remember one - wifi channel selection- but there may have been more) don’t seem to add any real value to learning the concepts. You’d recognize this class style if you’d just sat through a lecture from Socrates 2000 or whatever years ago. The course quickly becomes an exercise not in understanding and applying the material, but in remembering seemingly countless acronyms, standards, and data points that, practically, you can just look up if you need it. The weighting of information is also not always clear; some seemingly minor points that take a couple of seconds in a video appear in the end of unit exam, to much frustration. I gave up trying to score highly in the exams and just shot for a passing grade in the last two units because goodness me, if I need that level of granular detail, I can just google it. In summary, yes it is a useful course, yes there is a lot of good info here, but it could be so much better if the power of computing was used to add more practicality and more opportunities to actually apply the information you learn. Network simulation tools exist in the open source space, so there’s no reason such simulators could not be incorporated here. The archaic design and delivery of the course is likely to be the biggest challenge you will face in completing it, but completing it is valuable for the network novice.

For context: this was not the first time I have been exposed to 75% of the information in this course. It was meant as a refresher, and to fill in gaps in my knowledge. It did succeed at this: I now understand more than I did before.

That being said: there are some issues with this course. First and foremost, there was occasional inaccurate information. The particular example that I recall was MAC spoofing being the correct answer to the question "What is a common way to improve WiFi security?" (I am paraphrasing, something to that effect). As I put it in my feedback, this does not prevent anyone with greater than 15 brain cells from getting on your WiFi. It is trivially easy to bypass, and anyone capable of using Google could figure out how to do it in less than 10 minutes.

Luckily, this sort misinformation is relatively rare. I ran into it 3-4 times throughout this course, but it is by no means a systemic issue. There were some other minor issues with low level networking terms that could confuse someone with experience who was not merely parroting the answers from the previous videos, but on the whole this was not a persistent issue.

In a previous version of this review, I made some negative comments about the lack of labs. This was because I did not have a basis for comparison with the rest of the course. Because I have now been exposed to the some of the other modules, I have learned to lower my standards. By those standards, this course is actually pretty good, and it is easily the best one in this series. I still have minor gripes, but nothing compared to the issues I have with some of the later courses.

This one was definitely much MUCH harder than the first module of the course. However I will say, as daunting as computer networking used to be for me, after having completed this Bits and Bytes course I feel a lot more confident about my general knowledge on networking fundamentals and how information is sent back and forth across the internet. To be honest, I found the entire thing quite fascinating so I may consider pursuing this area further with a CCNA certification.

The most interesting thing I learned in this course is data encapsulation, as it takes place across the layers of the OSI model, and the exact steps computers take to establish a connection between each other across the Internet.

One thing I had hoped for was a bit more in depth and interactive activities with regards to running networking commands and utilizing virtualization technology through the cloud. We started it with the first module by running virtual instances on the Google Cloud Platform but then for this course we just suddenly stopped that entirely, which was pretty disappointing for me. I could run some of the commands myself but without any specific objective it was more just messing around than actually practicing my knowledge and skills.

I hope that the future modules have more in depth and interactive activities and assessments rather than just short multiple choice quizzes again and again :/

this course could use some adjustments at end of module quizzes. the first part is you have to reset it if you get one wrong and its a pain to have to keep doing it over and over again. drag and drop also had issues, in one instance I had the right answer but it was done in the wrong ORDER so i kept getting it wrong and the chat help was clueless. the directions didn't explain to do this in a particular order so i wasted a lot of time on the first part of the quiz.

Please spend more time on binary conversions, ipv6 conversions, math and technical aspects of certain topics because there needs to be step by step examples, instead of definitions. perhaps excercises with an answer key at the end so im better prepared for quiz questions.

please resolve the unavailable plugin for laptops. it says its only available for desktops. chat help didn't help and wanted screenshot. sigh. there are some glitches in this course that need to be worked out but it wasn't terrible, i think i learn better by doing rather than listening for a long time. I did learn why some things are done in tech that i didnt' know before but i blasted through this course because i already have tech experience and want certification.

This course definitely felt like a filter to see who was actually dedicated to sticking it out and learning the technical details of modern networking. It was a major spike in difficulty compared to the first course, but again I believe that was to work as a filter. After completing the course I have gained a firmer foundation in my understandings of IT and a greater confidence in my ability to learn. If there was one thing I would change about the course, it would be the provided supplemental readings. Don't get me wrong I found the readings useful but I did not appreciate that almost everyone of the readings were from Wikipedia. Now this isn't a problem due to reliability of information, it's a problem of information overload. I would appreciate if the supplemental readings kept in mind where we are in the Certification course. I found myself having to read hours more just understand one Wikipedia article in full. I think the readings would be of more use if they were in a more simplified language to represent better where we are knowledge.