For context: this was not the first time I have been exposed to 75% of the information in this course. It was meant as a refresher, and to fill in gaps in my knowledge. It did succeed at this: I now understand more than I did before.

That being said: there are some issues with this course. First and foremost, there was occasional inaccurate information. The particular example that I recall was MAC spoofing being the correct answer to the question "What is a common way to improve WiFi security?" (I am paraphrasing, something to that effect). As I put it in my feedback, this does not prevent anyone with greater than 15 brain cells from getting on your WiFi. It is trivially easy to bypass, and anyone capable of using Google could figure out how to do it in less than 10 minutes.

Luckily, this sort misinformation is relatively rare. I ran into it 3-4 times throughout this course, but it is by no means a systemic issue. There were some other minor issues with low level networking terms that could confuse someone with experience who was not merely parroting the answers from the previous videos, but on the whole this was not a persistent issue.

In a previous version of this review, I made some negative comments about the lack of labs. This was because I did not have a basis for comparison with the rest of the course. Because I have now been exposed to the some of the other modules, I have learned to lower my standards. By those standards, this course is actually pretty good, and it is easily the best one in this series. I still have minor gripes, but nothing compared to the issues I have with some of the later courses.

This one was definitely much MUCH harder than the first module of the course. However I will say, as daunting as computer networking used to be for me, after having completed this Bits and Bytes course I feel a lot more confident about my general knowledge on networking fundamentals and how information is sent back and forth across the internet. To be honest, I found the entire thing quite fascinating so I may consider pursuing this area further with a CCNA certification.

The most interesting thing I learned in this course is data encapsulation, as it takes place across the layers of the OSI model, and the exact steps computers take to establish a connection between each other across the Internet.

One thing I had hoped for was a bit more in depth and interactive activities with regards to running networking commands and utilizing virtualization technology through the cloud. We started it with the first module by running virtual instances on the Google Cloud Platform but then for this course we just suddenly stopped that entirely, which was pretty disappointing for me. I could run some of the commands myself but without any specific objective it was more just messing around than actually practicing my knowledge and skills.

I hope that the future modules have more in depth and interactive activities and assessments rather than just short multiple choice quizzes again and again :/

this course could use some adjustments at end of module quizzes. the first part is you have to reset it if you get one wrong and its a pain to have to keep doing it over and over again. drag and drop also had issues, in one instance I had the right answer but it was done in the wrong ORDER so i kept getting it wrong and the chat help was clueless. the directions didn't explain to do this in a particular order so i wasted a lot of time on the first part of the quiz.

Please spend more time on binary conversions, ipv6 conversions, math and technical aspects of certain topics because there needs to be step by step examples, instead of definitions. perhaps excercises with an answer key at the end so im better prepared for quiz questions.

please resolve the unavailable plugin for laptops. it says its only available for desktops. chat help didn't help and wanted screenshot. sigh. there are some glitches in this course that need to be worked out but it wasn't terrible, i think i learn better by doing rather than listening for a long time. I did learn why some things are done in tech that i didnt' know before but i blasted through this course because i already have tech experience and want certification.

This course definitely felt like a filter to see who was actually dedicated to sticking it out and learning the technical details of modern networking. It was a major spike in difficulty compared to the first course, but again I believe that was to work as a filter. After completing the course I have gained a firmer foundation in my understandings of IT and a greater confidence in my ability to learn. If there was one thing I would change about the course, it would be the provided supplemental readings. Don't get me wrong I found the readings useful but I did not appreciate that almost everyone of the readings were from Wikipedia. Now this isn't a problem due to reliability of information, it's a problem of information overload. I would appreciate if the supplemental readings kept in mind where we are in the Certification course. I found myself having to read hours more just understand one Wikipedia article in full. I think the readings would be of more use if they were in a more simplified language to represent better where we are knowledge.

As we learn more complex material I think as a student and also as a former teacher, it is best to re enforce the lecture material with Q&A sessions directly with teacher to answer the questions in a quick and accurate manner so in case any one gets stuck on a subject which consequently slow the progress and sometimes lead to quitting all together.

I think the way all these material are gathered and put together for this certificate is awesome, having said that there are improvements needed to make it easier for the students to follow and learn.

I am old school, got my masters back in early 90's, I think not only it is nice to have but it is must to have, as long as I remember we always saved our technical text books for future references. Although the online courses are much different than the traditional classroom classes, I still think for technical courses like these a nicely prepared PDF of the covered material would be very nice and practical for us newbies to keep and read again to better remember the material.

Didn't know what I was getting myself into starting into this course. Be prepared to take detailed notes from the very beginning. Draw plenty of diagrams. Rewatch the videos till you get the gist of it. Very very very technical. You really do get into the nitty gritty of computer networking. This course was no joke. But it helps to appreciate all the hard work that has gone into making what the internet is for us today.

I would appreciate more highlighting of important terms that we would get tested on. I would skip out on writing something down, when later regretting not writing it down because it was asked about on an exam. More pictures would also be very helpful. I'm a visual slow learner and have very little IT background. This course was a major struggle. Especially week 2.. the dreaded networking layer. If it weren't for my notes, I wouldn't have passed the quizzes and finished the course.

Overall, I found the course very informative as i feel that I've learned a great deal. HOWEVER, some of the Graded Assessments felt that they "overshot" the information that was provided by the course. In other words, I felt that I was unprepared and frustrated to take some of the graded assessments because the course did provide that information at all (IPv6 compression portion of the Graded Assessment). ALSO, it would be nice when taking quizzes and "quiz-like" graded assessments, that if an incorrect answer is selected, that when the user is reviewing the course, that the reason why an answer is incorrect is provided along with the correct answer. Many people that take this course do not have time to go back and review the sections to find a "needle in the haystack".

Thank you for the course. It is a good course overall, but it an use some tweaks to make it outstanding.

Please edit out the unnecessary/stupid 10 sec intro to EVERY video! In course 2, there are 89 videos. That's 890 seconds or 14.8 (basically 15 min) of pointless and meaningless time taken from the students! And that is just counting the videos from the second course!!! I'm not going to count how many videos are in all 5 courses of this program, but I'm assuming its in the hundreds. That's a lot of wasted time for a 10 second intro on every video!

And with some personal experience in video editing, I know that it really wouldn't take someone that long to go back and edit out the intros. I think someone could probably do it in a full work week (40 hrs) time.

I did enjoy this course a lot! This might be one of the most practical courses in this program. I probably experience a network issue at least once a day at my current IT support job.

It is A LOT. So gear up. I had a history teacher who once told me that you cannot use one source for history because different people will have different perspectives and you need to learn most of them. for those who are complaining about the course being a waste, I say you didn't use other resources like Youtube to help. Google and Youtube are your friends people. this a college level course and simply put, you won't be spoon fed.

Listen to the vids, take your notes, watch youtube videos on the topics you aren't clear on, do not rush the process, and google definitions for words and phrases that aren't clear.

I am a novice. All of this is new. Don't feel frustrated. take you time and learn at your own pace.

ask questions when you need help. read the forum threads. they are a wealth of help and sometimes resources.

We can do this.

The course was extremely challenging because of the dense material. I appreciate that you broke it down as far as you did. My one critique is that the supplemental reading in the last couple modules were copies of the script from the video, with a link at the end. My constructive feedback would be that if you want to include the information from the previous video in the supplementary reading, maybe you could phrase it in a different way in order to give people another chance if they didn't quite grasp the concept the first way it's explained. Then you can include the links at the end for further study. Otherwise it feels like "the supplemental reading no longer matters to the program's creators, so why should it matter to me?" (I don't know if everyone would feel this way, but it's how I felt after it happened twice.)

Could use a lot more helpful ways of understanding subnet masks and how the CIDR notation is worked out. Other than that, very helpful ways of learning ie. through video learning and supplemental reading as well as readings after videos to go deeper into the topics discussed. Quizzes were helpful in understanding the general concepts, however I do believe the quizzes could be more interactive as some of them are. With more interactive learning, it becomes much easier to understand how these new topics can be applied because actively doing the things shows us how it would be working in networking or in whatever topic we are currently covering as opposed to multiple choice, where an educated guess can more times than not help arrive at the correct answers.

Very informative. I enjoyed seeing into all the different protocols in detail. Before now the different networking models felt very inconclusive and confusing. Now I can tell you where a device falls into that model, the function of every layer, and what protocols are in place to keep it operating. I finally learned the infrastructure of how networking is organized. Before this course I could have easily told you about a DNS address and IPv4, but I couldn't tell you much of how it worked or why. This course took my surface level knowledge, and explained not only how we use it, but why. This course does an excellent job of building a foundational understanding of how the internet works, and what the future of technology is doing to improve it.

I really want the routing game to be a practice tool in this course. Not just in the test. Also, I am sure anyone struggling with the IP test in the last part could use some practice on it also, but once I did a few it wasn't so bad. I still want to play the routing game that was in the second quiz and I can't find anything like it elsewhere.

I also don't like that some of the topics are skimmed over and quizzed in basics rather than more detail. Some of the physical and network link layers also blend together to me at this point sometimes, but I believe I have the basic understanding to pursue other certificates with this knowledge.

Overall, this was a very useful course that gave a better understanding of networking to me.

This course was very good, yet I feel it could be just a "touch" better.

What I mean is I personally would have liked a "bit" more lab work. The course was instructed very well and the few 1 question quiz labs you take throughout the course were great. I personally would like a few more hands on labs added to the course - maybe in a 3 step approach - Beginning, Middle, End - I feel it would keep you involved more visually and assist in just showing the common real life steps you will physically have to take when resolving networking issues as an IT Professional - Other then that, the course was AMAZING in the knowledge you gain and understanding of the true genius behind networking and the internet as a whole

I understand lectures are an important part of any learning. But I would like to see more lab type listens to enforce the knowledge we are learning. For instance, I listened to the videos concerning IPv6, and how to shorten them. But I did not truly understand it until I took the test, actually using the knowledge to shorten the addresses.

There are many items, such as the different packets and protocols, that could be better explained using some type of lab.

But I have increased my knowledge. I have a deeper understanding of networking now. I just feel that there are some areas that I know, but don't truly understand. A lab portion could make a difference in that.

A very nice, digestible introduction to a 5-layer networking model!

Drills all the way down to the packet and media layer where bits travel as electrical signals, explaining switching, routing, DNS servers and other core networking infrastructure. Google presents things in a nice fashion, with good diagrams, analogies and explanation throughout. This course isn't a replacement for CCNA or whatever other massively deep networking certifications exist out there, but it'll give you a great foundation to understand and perhaps entice you to learn even more!

So far, my favourite course from the Google IT Support Certificate Specialisation here (I'm on the final one now).

This course goes very in-depth about the computer network, such as it's infrastructure, both hardware and software, and the troubleshooting for the network. One will learn about how the different network and data layers work and interact with each other; some history of the evolution of various components of the protocols that run and control how everything interacts with each other; and understand how those protocols actually work. This course is very detailed, and might seem overwhelming in information, but it's explained clearly, there are additional readings and links to official sites, and the video provides good visualizations to help explain concepts.

This course I rated a little bit less than the previous course because I feel like a lot of this information is very helpful, although I feel there should be more in this section on just making sure the users understand fully what is being taught and introduced and how its used with maybe more VR machines like used in the previous course. I loved that I learned a bunch of valuable information I just feel like the 5 layer network really does stump some people. I suggest possibly in the future doing a drag and drop diagram for the 5 layer network as well to have a better understanding of it. :D This course was very information heavy but awesome to learn!! :D

To me this was a hard course to understand. Some of the Modules and assignments should have had various examples and practice questions before the test/quizzes. One thing I did not like is there was very little feedback why we are wrong and how to approach the problem. I'm lucky that I am studying for Network+ and my CCNA so this was not so bad. However I quit this course a few months back because the content was not enough in my opinion to pass some of the exams. I had to youtube and learn from many other sources to find the answer and even the instructor showed Youtube videos instead of finding the answer from the provided content by google.

The course tests are not graded correctly, specifically, IPv6 address compression. Google grades differently to what they teach. And, they're wrong with the grades on IPv6 compression.

I figured out what Google did wrong with this IPv6 compression quiz. In the grading, they implemented rule 2 incorrectly. The rule states you can replace 2 or more hextets of all zeros with a double colon. Google replaces just one hextet with a double colon.

5d66:5ec9:0046:0000:2576:004f:7159:0639 (original)

5d66:5ec9:46:0:2576:4f:7159:639 (correct, but Google calls it wrong)

5d66:5ec9:46::2576:4f:7159:639 (incorrect, but Google calls it correct)

This course was very complicated and it's some very good material to learn. I do think it needs to be broken down further and more interactive. Most of it was just talking and telling definitions which for something like this makes it hard. In the beginning when there was the router and switch comparison to sending mail and how you receive it was fantastic! If more is done for other concepts like this, maybe using sport terms or doing something for the mail delivery again but in more depth, then maybe more will get the hang of it. It took me forever to pass due to it's difficulty and my limited time but I finally did it.

This course is very close to being a five star but I feel like the copious amounts of new words/acronyms to learn was ALOT! It would have been very nice to have been quizzed way more frequently on the new words especially since they were used throughout the course. I think overall adding more quizzes between the videos and at the end of the segment would have been very helpful in learning and retaining these words and concepts. It just felt like I was on a bullet train trying to learn and commit to memory all the billboards outside the train XD. Overall, if you get the core concepts down then you're definitely set :)

It's a good course and learned enough information to get me by in a midocure conversation on this subject. Like every process of learning something new, it is a challenge and worth it. This could of just been me but the way the course is broken down is intense for someone who has no knoledge in this catergory. I had to put in extra hours looking up things and watching videos on other sites to understand what this couse was talking about in their short videos. In a nut shell they gave me a path to fallow and I liked the challenge, I just wish it was updated and had more resourses on the spot to help me understand.

Definitely a harder module than the first. Lots of new concepts. I would give it 5 starts but there were some breezy passages that warranted more explination, and maybe from a different present to make sure you got a diverse look at the topic. I'm looking specifically at subnetting, and the process of the three way handshake over networks. I had to go to external sources to bine up on these. There were some stinkers of questions in the quizes that had wording ambiguous or contrary to video content, but that is a given in even college coursework. Over all I learned a bunch and enjoyed the process. Onto the next.

This is really a step up, from module 1, however it is impossible to know and learn everything about networking. If people going on the will find that CompTIA or Cisco having a different approach to things, said this Google setting the baseline here, and people interested in this field should look for CompTIA Network + certificate, rather Cisco since it is vendor based and mostly you can see it as training for their own products than anything else, not every company has the money for the high end equipment. Therefore it is good to know the fundamental things disconnected from any specific branded soft/hardware.