My Networking Learning Journey 1: Why and How

Why Networking?

I don't know if others in the tech industry feel the same, but I constantly have the impression that I'm missing something—that there's always another skill I need to acquire. My list of things to learn continuously expands despite dedicating almost every free moment to learning something new. What's more frustrating is that each new topic I explore seems to uncover a whole host of additional concepts I need to master. The list never stops growing, even when I'm actively working to shorten it. Ironically, the more I learn, the more aware I become of my knowledge gaps that seemingly require IMMEDIATE attention.

Networking has been one of those persistent subjects haunting me almost from the beginning of my career—understanding how everything works under the hood, how computers and other devices communicate at the most fundamental level. Sure, I know about the HTTPS protocol and related concepts, but how does it actually work underneath? What happens at the signal level when data is transmitted between computers? Obviously, data is transferred in binary form—electrical signals representing 0s and 1s—but what happens next? What exactly occurs in this process? How do you build a secure physical network? How do you properly set up a home network? As it turns out, one can successfully program for quite a long time with only a vague understanding of these topics.

However, I believe that a DevOps engineer should definitely have a solid grasp of networking fundamentals. That's why I've decided to thoroughly learn this subject from the ground up. I don't need to immediately become a networking expert, but I want to gain awareness and confidence in my skills—to know how things work and be able to explain them to a layperson. Understanding how the internet works at its core, what networks are, and how they function seems crucial, especially when working with cloud infrastructure, ensuring security, implementing effective service communication, troubleshooting connectivity issues, and optimizing network performance.

Where Will I Learn?

I believe there's no better place to learn about networking than Cisco, and fortunately, they have an e-learning platform with many free courses and learning paths offering vast amounts of knowledge, hours of training, and valuable materials. So I've decided to start there. I want to treat this series of posts as my learning journal where I'll share the things I've learned and internalized. I'll try to present this knowledge as I understand it—this approach will help me reinforce what I learn during the training since there's pressure not to publish anything incorrect on blog.