How to better understand the nuts and bolts of networking/sysadmin and etc?

user3028938

I have started reading Network Warrior but it is already going over my head with talk of switches and frames.

I have never come across such discussion in my 3 decades or so of using computers.

Maybe it will make more sense when they get to sections on ping and routes but so far it is not helping my understanding much.

Any other recommendations? Linux focused.

I have used remote servers, setup home networking, setup vpns, am able to scrape by setting things up with those respective things but always feel like I have no idea what is going on under the hood and have to ask for help as soon as something goes wrong with routing issues.

How to demystify the nuts and bolts of networking and how computers on the internet communicate with each other?

FlorinMarian

This course worth every penny: https://www.udemy.com/course/complete-networking-fundamentals-course-ccna-start/?couponCode=LETSLEARNNOWPP

totally_not_banned

If you have some programming background you could do a couple exercises in relation to sniffing/decoding or injecting packets at the ethernet (frame) level. For example you could write a simple scanner that uses those approaches. That might flesh out frames a little more.

If that isn't for you even just sniffing traffic to actually see what happens on your network below the IP protocol level might give you a couple clues. Well, doing that is actually probably not a bad idea in general. It'll show you how packets get from one interface to another or how IPs get attached to interfaces.

user3028938

@totally_not_banned said:
If you have some programming background you could do a couple exercises in relation to sniffing/decoding or injecting packets at the ethernet (frame) level. For example you could write a simple scanner that uses those approaches. That might flesh out frames a little more.

If that isn't for you even just sniffing traffic to actually see what happens on your network below the IP protocol level might give you a couple clues. Well, doing that is actually probably not a bad idea in general. It'll show you how packets get from one interface to another or how IPs get attached to interfaces.

I like this idea especially since it won't cost any money . I actually did do some packet sniffing back in the WEP wifi encryption days for cracking networks however I only did that with that very narrow focus in mind with no awareness of what the broader picture might be.