Computer Networking
Last revised 9/21/2026

Computer Networking

The whole course, condensed from the standard textbook into short pieces

A complete pass through computer networking: how hosts and routers move data across layered networks, and why each layer exists at all. Eight parts follow the stack from what the Internet physically is, through the application, transport, network and link layers, to wireless, mobility and security. It is the ground a university course covers, cut down to what carries weight and handed to you one short piece at a time.

PrimerField Guide
Earn11CreditsinMathematics
8Modules63Sessions

Modules in this Collection’s System

Coming soon

Foundations: what the Internet is actually made of

The pieces, the delays and the layering — before any protocol does anything

8Sessions
Coming soon

The application layer: where your traffic is born

HTTP, DNS, mail and streaming — the protocols you meet before a single packet leaves

9Sessions
Coming soon

The transport layer: reliability built on an unreliable network

UDP, TCP and the machinery underneath them

9Sessions
Coming soon

The network layer I: forwarding and the IP datagram

What a router does in a nanosecond, and how IP addresses make a network global

7Sessions
Coming soon

The network layer II: routing among networks

How routers learn the map — and why autonomous systems have to trust each other

7Sessions
Coming soon

The link layer and local area networks

Frames, addresses and switches — the layer that is still a wire

8Sessions
Coming soon

Wireless and mobile networks

Links without wires, and the harder problem of staying reachable while moving

7Sessions
Coming soon

Network security

Confidentiality, integrity and authentication — built from the socket up

8Sessions
Coming soon

What You'll Walk Away With

  • 4delay formulas for turning a slow connection into a diagnosis
  • 6message exchanges you can draw from memory — handshake, DNS lookup, DHCP, ARP, TLS, BGP update
  • 5congestion-control phases that explain any TCP throughput graph
  • 3error-detection schemes and the exact failure each one misses
  • 7security mechanisms mapped to the property each one buys

You'll Have Answers To

  • ?Why does a video call keep working while a download on the same link stalls?
  • ?If packets are dropped, how does a file still arrive complete and in order?
  • ?Why can one bad route announcement take sites offline on the other side of the world?
  • ?What does HTTPS actually protect, and what does it leave exposed?
  • ?Why is the wireless link the only one that acknowledges every frame?

Critical Concepts Explored

Store-and-forward transmissionFour sources of packet delayProtocol layeringMultiplexing and demultiplexingSliding windowAIMD congestion controlLongest prefix matchingPath-vector routingCSMA/CACertificate authority chain
Editor's Note
“A university course, finally sized for someone learning it alone.”

Textbooks for this subject run to hundreds of pages because they are written for a semester with a lecturer in the room. This collection keeps the same ground and the same rigour, drops the padding, and hands it to you one short piece at a time.

Editor's Brief
Who it's for
A self-directed learner who wants a real grounding in networking and would rather not spend a term inside a textbook to get it.
What stands out
The textbook's top-down arc is kept, but it is cut down and rebuilt so each piece stands on its own — you can learn one, stop, and come back.
Read if
Read if you can describe what a router does but not what a routing protocol does.
Gold Quotes
No device on the Internet knows the whole path a packet takes. Each layer solves one problem and hands the rest upward.

This is what layering buys: a router never needs to understand HTTP, and a browser never needs to understand Ethernet. Everything else in the course — addressing, routing, congestion control — follows from that division of labour.

About the Curator
NNano College

Nano College takes the standard university textbook for a course and turns it into short, self-contained pieces you can actually finish. We keep the ground the textbook covers and the rigour it insists on; what we leave out is the padding that only exists to fill a semester.