good

good

Three big points with regard to the Networking course.

1. Victor Escobedo, the instructor, is great. He's a huge step-up from the first course (Tech Support Fundamentals) and its carousel of people constantly shuffling in-and-out, and he's ahead of the instructors you're given in the later courses, too. He might present as being a little corny and -- at times -- he's a little robotic reading off of the teleprompter but he's got a great way of speaking to help you follow his line of thoughts. Others don't seem like they actually... care about your success? I know it's weird to think that a dude reading off a teleprompter could care, but it's kind of a "you have to experience it to get what I mean".

2. This course and the curriculum are an absolutely silly jump in how difficult the material can be to parse and make sense of. If you breezed through Course 1, this one might stop you dead in your tracks when it tries to teach you something like Subnetting (which was the biggest pain point for me, personally). There are also points where the curriculum doesn't really efficiently explain a point, which is kind of a good thing, because it encourages you to seek out other resources. A lot of what I began learning in this course, I'd finish learning on YouTube or in some documentation on Wikipedia.

3. For some reason, this course is going to tell you the TCP/IP 5-layer model is the standard. It's going to speak in terms of the TCP/IP 5-layer model a lot. You need to learn the OSI model instead. No one uses TCP/IP, and the Supplemental Reading they offer actually tells you that it's being phased out in favor of the OSI.

For me, I had to use a lot of outside resources to help me understand this and a lot of the time, there aren't practical examples you can follow to better grasp what it is a lot of these things are. As in, you'll learn *how* to determine how many subnets any given IPv4 address may have, but you'll never actually open a program on your computer and work with subnets hands-on. Whereas in course 3 (Operating Systems and you) you're constantly encouraged to follow along with the instructor's work.

All in all, I think this is an essential course for everyone. It's important to understand how all this network stuff works in an increasingly digital age where we're sending info through the air. Heavily recommend.

The course itself is excellent. I'm impressed by how much information can be easily explained in a compact format. It truly is a 5 star course.

That said, the tech support being offered is Amazon level incompetence, and Coursera should be embarrassed. The IPv6 compression exam at the end of this course has a serious technical bug. I reached out to Coursera's technical support team, two members of which -- Evelyn and Jet, specifically -- ignored what I wrote, declared the problem to be my fault, and gave me instructons on how to complete the exam because they clearly thought I was a moron. The problem was an imposed character limitation of 20 characters in the answer space due to copy/paste inexplicably adding extra invisible characters in the answer space. The other workaround to ensure a correct answer requires entering something screwball that should not have worked whenever a correct answer was checked as wrong. I did my research to get past that and solved it in under 24 hours, whereas your support team have been sitting on this for at least 6 months, as reported in the forums Evelyn and Jet so "helpfully" suggested I check. After being on the receiving end of a shining example of how not to offer IT support according to your own certification course, I'll let your crack team figure it out on their own. Rest assured, I won't bother to reach out to them again.

Exposure to new vocabulary, etc. is excellent. In the fog of learning I picked up much terrific minutiae. Yet somehow with the minutiae I need a better understanding of the purpose of ip addressing, network stack model work, reside and interplay. Better illustration of the handoff between layers and when they handoff and why. Possibly my reviewing the material will prove to strengthen my grasp of this and other but I'll probably have to go to other resources. Through the networking I have felt as though I was lacking some fundamental understanding even as I was learning. I do not feel confident. Thinking about what I've learned is a blur. I guess future repetition and re-reading will help. Hopefully, the completion of the certificate will be valued by employers.

If you got here from Course 1, just know this course does not pull punches at all. There is going to be several technical jargon terms thrown at you every video, and you're expected to remember them. I recommend buying a college-ruled notebook and pen, because you are going to have to write a lot down to keep up and remember everything. This is the reason I give the course 4 stars, by trying to minimize the length of the videos, there isn't quite the amount of time a typical student would need to memorize all this material.

I think the course videos were good, but the quizzes at the end of the model could be little bit more engaging as most of the questions were basic ones.

i wish it would be much more practical and hands on systems and real scenarios

It would've been nice if the course provided more exmaples of how all the concepts of networking work in real life. It was pretty hard for me to piece all the inforamtion together, and understand how everything works eventually.

this course was not well explained . special week 2 and week 3 . the video could be more clear and simplified . there was a lot of error . week 5 and 6 was good . networking map could be explained better

having an issue with week 6 that has not been resolved by coursera. The issue has been there in one of the last excersices without a resolution. I am dissapointed at the potential for this certificate

Good

While this course obviously covers a very important topic in IT, I feel it does it in all the wrong ways. For a certification course that is described as very entry level, and a precurser to taking your CompTIA A+ exam, this course is WAY too difficult and covers topics that simply are not necessary to know at this stage of your journey. Having already passed my 1101 exam, I can tell you that the depth in which this course delves into networking is not required of you for CompTIA and that exam holds a lot more weight than this cert does. For example, why are we constantly pounded about header sections of datagrams?? Does it really matter how many bits are in a specific section of a datagram header? How does knowing that information help you troubleshoot a networking problem? I mean, it's interesting background information but I can't see it's practical usefulness in a real world scenario and I can tell you CompTIA questions are almost all real world scenarios. Yet every test in this course forces you to memorize this seemingly insignificant information. On top of that, the way we're taught the information through such short videos does not help teach these difficult concepts for beginners. Several times during this course I found myself on Professor Messer's website studying videos for the Network + cert just to get through this material because it's simply not explained thoroughly by the instructor in this course. And the Network + cert is not at all considered a beginner cert and it's not required for entry level positions, so why is that content in this course? Professor Messer has several videos, some even 15-20 minutes in length to teach networking concepts, and that course is free of charge. I was able to learn much better from him than this instructor for that reason. Save yourself some time and learn this information from a better source, I was very dissapointed and beyond frustrated with the content and implementation of material in this course.

Course is literally just a huge amount of videos where you watch a guy talk. Not even remotely accessible/useful to those who are hard of hearing or have learning challenges. Almost no visual aids are used - and the few visual aids are not shared with you, so you have to dig through the videos later to try and find them if you want to look at them. The course isn't offered in Text (most of the videos have a transcript - but it's clearly autogenerated and has errors; and NONE have captions. There were at least half a dozen videos with no transcript at all! This course is more setup if you want to create Network Software than if you just want to understand the basics of networking. There was no need to force the learner to data packets from scratch, work out the exact edits to a data package during processing (like new version numbers, and what happens to each piece of data), or to learn how to read binary or convert IPv6 to IPv4. NONE of those things are topics for beginners who want a brief intro to the topic. These are all advanced things that software was designed to do for us. We just need to understand the intent - not be able to duplicate the results. Honestly, this course was a waste of my time and money. I didn't learn much that I will ever use, and I spent most of it literally searching through transcipts because WATCHING SOMEONE TALK ISN'T LEARNING! There were only a couple of interactive activities of any value. Most of them were either way too intricate (and in many cases, not actually something we were taught how to do), or were "optional discussions" with the rest of the class - although there isn't really a class because it's at your own pace and most of the posts are from some time ago).

Words are thrown around interchangeably and haphazardly too often for something supposed to be so logical. It doesn't have to be dry but I felt it was made to be so personable that info came out confusing and sloppy at times. The quiz questions felt more focused on learning your specific cue cards than the actual universal knowledge. Sometimes it felt the questions were more tricky than the info itself. Plus, when you get a question wrong it doesn't tell you what specific video to double back to, it just lazily tells you it's somewhere in the entire section. Sometimes it's obvious where the question will be but often things are thrown in randomly to the weekly modules. I found myself confused after watching 7 minute videos only to head to youtube and getting a better explanation in less time for many of these subjects. The info was basic enough for beginners but I felt it left out more practical knowledge. I learned about subnets but I can see subnet addresses on my personal computer but I feel based on what was taught, that isn't where you go to change it? I don't even know? This felt more like a data dump than teaching. I know more but I wish I could have learned more of how to apply it.

I found the instruction needlessly confusing. The instructor sort of rambled making no distinction between needed facts and ancillary information. When questioned, i was asked to respond to questions based on one sentence of content. Their was little to "drill down" on as everything was a mono-tone of boring lecture. Yes, the information was correct, but much of it was presented without benefit of instructive example. Just a little time taken to show the "how" of operations would have made a great difference. Instead, i struggled to maintain interest and in the end i settled for the passing grade ( 92 ) instead of pushing for my best. I felt like this just had to end. Worst, i started to doubt myself and the value of this course. But, shaking that off i intend to go to the next level and do well their. Bits and bytes was disappointing

I feel that the course titled The Bits and Bytes of Computer Networking wasn't really what I was expecting it to be. The lessons did not really go that much in depth and I felt that I really didn't learn the absolute fundamentals of computer networking. In most cases throughout this course, I had to find additional materials to help me understand what the course was trying to present to me. Even the provided supplemental readings (with perhaps the Wikipedia articles as an exception) failed to give me any kind of understanding of what I was supposed to learn in that particular lesson. Also, I feel it would have been beneficial to me, as a somewhat networking novice, if the lessons were more hands-on with scenarios of what I might encounter if I were in a networking role.

Honestly, I was pretty disappointed in this networking course. In my opinion, the Coursera team should overhaul this course. Just having one instructor talk about abstract concepts in 90% of the videos isn't helpful for grasping and cementing in new concepts. I'm a pretty visual and hands-on learner, and this course was 90-95% all auditory. These were difficult abstract concepts that desperately begging for visuals, animations, real life scenario videos, simulations and virutal computer labs to help cement concepts. I don't feel I've learned as much as I could have. I'm really hoping the next course 3 OS & other 2 courses going forward won't be as frustrating as I work toward my Google IT Support Pro certificate.

So far this course is only ok. I do not feel like it is giving me a solid foundation. They try to cover so much information, a lot of it very technical in a little time. They tell you to rewatch the videos and read the supplementary reading. The supplementary reading is ONLY wikipedia. And do not get me started on who scripted this--I don't know what I am going to do if I hear the words "I should call out" or "spoiler alert" one more time. The teachers, during the lesson videos seem very inauthentic. Google would have been better just letting the teachers free style the lesson.

The gentleman that led this course did not do a very good job. This entire course i was more confused than anything and had to get a lot of help from outside sources. Most of the valuable content was not explained thoroughly and the instructor would vaguely go over information that just so happened to be on a test. The jokes were so lame as well, I do not feel like this course was for beginners as was advertised. Hopefully you will all read this one day and get another instructor for this course that can do a better job.

There is allot of unneccesary talking, that makes it a little hard to follow. Especially for those who may have a learning disability. I understand the instructor in the video is trying to explain why and how he got interested into the course. But all of the uneccesary added talking should be saved at the end once we have finished the quizes and tests. I personally find it a little hard to follow when there is too much information given at a time. It's giving way to much to remember. It's almost over whelming.

The amount of course material given does not match up with the assignments & its really annoying. Your given all this information and supplement reading to digest and it feels like the quizzes and test aren't built around that. If google is going to give us quizzes and test then let the course material's focus match the focus of the topics on the quizzes don't throw an overwhelming amount of information into one section and then quiz us on half the information!

Course is taught using too much high end vocabulary. It is really hard to follow along when the instructor is using terms we aren't familiar with. Also the videos are broken down in weird lengths, there will be a few 1 -2 minute videos that work well for their topic but then a 6-10 minute video that's packed full of information and feels like its rushed and becomes overwhelming for the student.

Way too much information - should've been broken down into two parts. Poor explanation for subnetting. The interactive quizzes were confusing and I had to utilize outside resources. Discussion forums and mentors were NOT helpful. Glad that I've passed the section and am done with this course. I'll use another reource to master the topic.

FIlled with tons of concepts that you can't really get hands-on experience from, at least not through the Coursera outline. Seeing the same "instructor" reading the script at you is just not engaging, especially when he attempts to be engaging with puns. Hopefully the rest of these courses have more tangible lessons.