The title of the thread really says it all.
I’m going to try and get enrolled in a Networking and Information Systems class somewhat soon, and I wanna get jump start on it and familiarize myself with the subject. That way I can make the most of my time. Some of you might remember a thread I made a while back about something like this, but that fell through as I got caught on a waiting list.
But basically the certifications available are:
A+ Software and A+ Hardware
Network+
Security+
Linux+
But I will definitely try to go for more certs if it’s worth my time.
Any suggestions on some physical reading material or video tutorials on Linux and Networking in general? Just assume I know very little about Linux commands and stuff like that. Mostly beginner stuff.
@DeusQain any suggestions on reading material that would be helpful to a beginner for networking? Stuff that would be helpful for familiarizing terms, understanding protocols, general understanding of basic concepts, etc.
I can’t wait to see a possible video on OpenWrt or LEDE, btw.
@Eden that complete Linux course video is great. Can’t wait to dive into that further. It even covers a little bit of virtual box in the beginning, which is extremely helpful. Can’t wait to finish that when I’ve got time.
For Linux specifically, you will probably be shown how to do a lot of things with ifconfig. This is wonderful because it’s going to be on every system you work with. This is also terrible, because it’s going to be on every system you work with. ifconfig was part of the old net-tools package, which has not seen a Linux update in over 15 years now. People need to stop using it so it can finally die.
Get a jump start on things. Learn to use the new iproute2 tools. Everything net-tools can do, and more, and using a modern command structure.
Cisco CCNA official cert guides (ICND 200-105 ICND 200-205) are great to help you understand networking fundamentals, they build up from “these are wires in an ethernet cable” through “this is how a switch works and what an arp packet is” through “here’s a routing table” to “here’s some basics of MPLS and BGP”… You can go through the books skipping the command line examples (or not).
http://lartc.org - teaches you the basics of how to do stuff in Linux , it’s a bit dated but still practical enough to get your grips with networking in Linux, all commands should still just work and you can send PRs to update the book if you want you discover something that needs fixing — it’s a more hands on book than the Cisco stuff,
it’s worth going through both to compare and contrast.
LPI (Linux Programming Interfaces) - if you have Linux running, your browser, and code/text editor work, you know some c/c++ and hello world works for you, but now you want to get cracking writing some real code this is the book for you. It’ll give you insight into mechanisms of how Linux deals with system resources and teach you how to use those APIs in your code, this includes sockets… Thankfully, it’s all opensource and there’s some documentation in the libc/kernel code once you learn to get around.
What I’m missing is a good book for Linux beginners, like Cisco CCNA/ICND books would be for networking. Something to get you by on your day to day, bash, SSH , filesystem, “what’s init” - that kind of stuff.
