The second course of Google IT Support, Bits and Bytes of Computer, is focused on the connectivity of devices via the internet, the protocols and infrastructures needed to make it work, the future prospect of the internet, cloud computing, etc. It is divided into six weeks, whose contents are as follows;
Week One
Week one is titled, "Introduction to Networking." Victor Escobedo speaks on the different layers of the TCP/IP Network Model, media access control (MAC) address, the history of ethernet and what it does. He tells more about different types of communication cables and their differences, network ports, and patch panels. He gives us the difference between a network switch and a hub, revealing to us what collision domain is, and how network switch helps reduce its occurrence. He also tells us about duplex (half and full) and simplex communication. He ends by making us understand what ethernet frames are.
Week 2
Week 2 is titled "Network Layer." Victor Escobedo explains what IP (Internet Protocol) is; the different sections of the IP datagram, IP classes (class A to E), and the sections of an IP address (network and host IDs). He also describes subnetting, subnet mask and ID, classless inter-domain routing (CIDR), the columns of a routing table, routing protocols, (internal and external gateway protocols), and non-routable address space.
Week 3 In this week titled "The Transport and Application Layers," Victor Escobedo unveils the transport layer, multiplexing and demultiplexing, file transfer protocol (FTP), the different sections of the TCP, User Datagram Protocol (UDP, which is a connectionless protocol), firewall (which help keep a network secure by preventing unwanted traffic), OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) model, web servers, the three and four-way handshakes.
Week 4
Week four is titled "Networking Services." Victor Escobedo discusses domain name system (DNS, which converts domain names to IP addresses), types of DNS servers, anycast, resources record types (A record, text record, MX record, CNAME (Canonical Name) record, etc.), the sections of a domain name (subdomain, domain, and top level domain (TLD)), Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), Network Address Translation (NAT), IP masquerading, port preservation, port forwarding, usage of non-routable address spaces and NAT, virtual private networks (VPN), and proxy services.
Week 5
Week five is titled "Connecting to the Internet." Victor Escobedo takes us through the history of the internet from dial up, to broadband, to digital subscriber line, to fiber connections (FTTB, FTTH, FTTN), site-to-site VPN, and wide area network (WAN). He speaks on wireless privacy, thus introducing us to the concept of wired equivalent privacy (WEP), Wi-Fi protected access (WPA), and MAC filtering.
Kevin Limehouse comes in to educate us on mobile device networks (cellular networks, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi).
Week 6
Week six is titled "Troubleshooting and the Future of Networking." Victor Escobedo enlightens us on error detection and recovery, the internet control message protocol (ICMP), the usage of ping and traceroute in the command terminal for testing connectivity; Netcat on Linux and Mac, and Test-NetConnection in Windows for testing network connectivity at the transport layer, and the usage of nslookup. He takes us through the concept of cloud computing and hardware visualization. He also gives us the fundamental knowledge of infrastructure as a service (Iaas), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS); the need for IPv6, its structure, and how it works alongside IPv4.
Rob and Candice come in to do a role play of an interview session.
This course was a whole lot to take in, and a lot of personal reading might be required to catch up; nonetheless, Victor Escobedo did a great job explaining all the terms and concepts an IT specialist would need for their daily operations.