Holy cow! I have a Ph.D. and have taught coding for years. I never truly understood how networks... worked. I can tell I have only scratched the surface, but I'm stoked! I couldn't stop learning this stuff! Thanks for an amazing course!

The good: it's not easy! I didn't pass several of the tests the first several times I tried. I had to go back and learn more. Brush up and do some research online. Rather than dissuading me, it convinced me that what I was learning was "real" content. This isn't a fluff Coursera course. Thanks! It made me prouder when I did succeed! Also, the instructor is likable, which is huge in online learning. Not pompous. Not tangential. Just perfect.

What could be better -- hey, I'm a professor, so there is always room for improvement:

The scripts were good, but more visuals would be helpful. Also, more description of some of the vocabulary would be nice. Perhaps a glossary. Several of the test questions were ambiguous: one referred to fiber being laid to a "cabinet." Does this mean cabinet for utilities, server cabinet, the cabinet where my grandma keeps her wifi router?

Overall, awesome job, Google, and great work Coursera! Now that I work in online education at my university, promoting it broadly, I know that the competition is fierce from you guys. I think this is a good thing. Learning should be affordable and mobile.

Very impressed!

This course is a big step up in difficulty from the first course. They will throw a lot of terms and definitions at you all at once. That being said, the information is well-organized.

I passed this course in just over a week. All I did was watch the videos, and pause every time a new definition came up. I would copy the definition into a google document along with notes and screenshots of the visuals. I read over some of the supplemental reading out of curiosity, but most of it wasn't relevant to the quizzes.

If you come across a concept that you find difficult, just pause the video, and read the transcript carefully. Sometimes the choice of words are very specific, but could be misinterpreted. I read other reviews where people mention they had to learn the material elsewhere; but all of the questions on the quizzes are in fact covered by material in the videos.

Overall, it was very enjoyable. I love this material. It's clear the presenter is passionate about the material and it prevents the detailed/mundane concepts from becoming too boring. I only wish there were more interactive troubleshooting techniques (more labs), but I'm thinking the purpose of this course instead is just to give you a detailed technical overview of how networks work.

I definitely feel like I've learned the material, but it many ways it feels in spite of the course and not because of it. The rest of this certification program felt so natural and well structured, but this one felt like having someone read a textbook off a teleprompter. Understanding how any of it goes together was something I pretty much had to accomplish myself by finding better sources and explanations elsewhere. And the biggest strength of the course before it--the use of virtual desktops and cloud technology to actually practice interacting with the material--was nowhere to be seen here. So... I need to remotely connect to a WIndows 10 VM to learn how to make a folder, but don't need any practice doing ANYTHING network related aside from rewatching the videos...? Just strange decisions all the way around. I hope they consider restructuring and expanding this course. It's a relief to be through it, and I usually don't feel that way, even with highly technical material.

Easily 1/2 of the information that this course covers is USELESS, POINTLESS when the scope of the program is for people wanting to get into IT. I have been in IT since the early 80's, and I'm going for the certification to prove to prospective employers that I'm serious about returning to my roots--support. I can assure you that for someone just starting out in IT, it is utterly pointless to spend any time at all on datagrams, counting in binary and compressing IPv6! Jesus!!! spend more time going from the top down (i.e. troubleshooting fundamentals, etc.) and a hellova lot less time coming from the "bottom up." If I were training to become a carpenter, I would Hnever take a course that included an in depth history of the nail!! (who gives a S....t about what happened to Netscape Navigator!) This is a course for people trying to get into IT not trying to become a professor of networking traffic.

I believe that there was an overload of information presented. I felt as though it was a continual run on sentence, just way to much and at some points it was just rambling it seemed like.

So many terms and so little explanation. The courses are like dropping a term after another.

I really enjoy this module. Everything taught was new for me. I already know what is DNS or VPN between a lot of topics showed. I'm Thankful with Google to allow people like me learn in a way so easy.

Seemed like a lot of information that I didn't need to know and the quizzes asked questions about very irrelevant things that weren't emphasized enough in the lessons because going back to find the answers proved to be a chore. I understand the information and what was presented but the quizzes were a nightmare because they asked you stuff that I'm sure even seasoned vets don't have memorized but it's stuff you would have to memorize when there's no benefit to committing it to memory or barely to even write in my notes.

During the course we see some guy, reading networking documentation from the TV sufler. And that's all. The same information you can read from Wikipedia for free, or you can even listen it from Wikipedia. So why you should pay for image of some guy, reading the same information? :-)

total a waste of time, i completed this certification and in the end Coursera provided me a certificate with a strange name FAJOF .

tell me what should i do now .

a worst experience.

and there is no option of change your name.

i request Coursera to look upon my issue.

Learning about IPv6 and IPv4 was interesting to me. However, I do have some complaints about the course that I think should be addressed.

First of all, the IPv6 Compression quiz is bugged. If I clicked the restart button displayed during the quiz, it would tell me that I was on the 10th question, and even if I got it correct and submitted it, it would give me a zero. Why would I want to reload the quiz anyway? This is because I had incorrect questions and I had no idea why. I simply assumed that the course was wrong. Now I know that it is because compressing an address using rule 2 only applies to the first time 0's are displayed in consecutive order. At least, that's what I think. I can't be sure since the course didn't cover it, but it did quiz me on it.

Second of all, this may not be an issue with the course, but it is an issue with Coursera. My certificates do not display the correct name. My name is Orlando Angel Magana, and it displays my name as E N Orlando Angel Magana. I don't know why the ID Verification decided to give me 2 additional names, but it is an issue that I have looked into and still cannot solve. I recently found 3 steps on the Coursera website that I am told to follow to resolve this issue. Step 1 tells me to go to my settings page. I click the word "Settings", which takes me there. Step 2 tells me to click a Request a Name Change button. Such a button does not exist. I typed ctrl + f, and there was no such button to be found. A separate piece of information tells me that they do not support updating my information after verification. This is most unpleasant. It feels like my achievements are undermined, because it is under some other name. Other than that, I enjoyed learning from this course. I love how they would have inspiration videos that would tell me about other journeys that IT members took.

Some of the interactive quizzes could have been better explained and administered in a more efficient way. For example, the final quiz converting IPv6 to IPv4 shortened address - you should not have to continually redo answers that you already had correct. The way the quiz is administered is 10 random IPv6 numbers. It should have been done in such a way that once you get one correct, it won't generate again. A lot of the interactive quizzes were given this way and it just made them more time consuming. Imagine getting 9/10 right and you make a small error on the 10th. You then have to redo all 10 again despite having gotten 9 right previously. It's just inefficient. Other than that everything else was great. I'd like to see a mix of multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank on the quizzes instead of just one way or the other but that's not that big of a deal because there are flaws with both types of questions. I'd also consider doing away with the peer graded essays. I get the purpose for them, but I also don't think people were grading them fairly or thoroughly. I know for a fact that I did not include one of the items that was asked and 2/3 people gave me a passing mark on that particular item which shows flat out that they did not take the time to read through my submission. Overall great job, I'm enjoying the courses so far.

I wish slides were included or per video. Would have been much easier than reading transcripts. To pass the course I had to constantly refer back to the videos and to Wikipedia. Maybe this was the intension. If so, I guess I should up my rating from 4 to 5 cause it did create that skill in me to go out there and research this stuff on my own

OMG learned a lot, so many things got covered which i don't even know even if I in second Year in Computer Eng. Glad I found this course. Really Help a lot.Now im not the same person in my class. I have very solid foundation of networking. Yeahh

I really found the instructors for this course great, and it was an excellent overview of networking. I have needed to do a fair amount of supplemental reading however, in order to get a better understanding of the material. I found this course briefly touches on a lot of really complex topics that are difficult to get your head around, but doesn't quite go into depth enough about how these different components will effect us as IT professionals. For example, I would love to see more information about troubleshooting at different layers in the model, and identifying where the source of the problem is. While this was very informative regarding networking, I'm not sure there was enough information about troubleshooting networking issues, which I would really like to learn!

Thanks to Google for coming up with such an awesome course. If you're new to networking, you've got to stick to your guns & deal with the course patiently. Just one area of improvement, the course would've been x10 effective had they provided practical & more visual stuff. It's all theory & there's only so much you can remember. But anyway, I've definitely taken away a ton of value from this course. I would recommend it to any beginner just heading out with networking.

Great contents, but I feel that the way these contents are delivered can be significantly improved in two ways.

1. For more than half contents of this course, it is delivered in the logic follow/pipeline of "theory followed by examples". However, I feel the other way around, i.e. "examples followed by theory" would make it way more effective.If theories are shown before examples are presented, students will be very confusing until they see the examples, which they are very familiar in daily life ---- Everyone is "familiar" with the Internet (in terms of examples).The other way, "examples followed by theory" will be way more intuitive. Through examples (that you have seen in your daily life) you will know what problems you need to solve, and then followed by the theories or methods about how to solve it. In this way you know your target at the very beginning through something you are familiar with. It will be more comfortable to look into the theories and terminologies afterwards.

2. Show the slides instead of the instructor for most of the time, and use clean background without characters/letters for the instructor. All the terminologies are very new to students, seeing them visually at the same time (especially when they have an inner connection) will make the learning experience for new theories/terminologies much smoother. Currently, the terminologies only occasionally show up in a distracting background with fancy lights of other characters, which is really confusing, making students lost until the slides with examples shown up.

The teacher was friendly and there was a lot of information to learn, but a little forewarning for new IT learners: you will absolutely need outside sources to fully understand what's being discussed here. One issue I had with this course is that I took notes while watching the videos, and I thought I could manage with writing key terms and things that sounded important. As it turned out, the quizzes mostly asked questions that were briefly mentioned or said in passing. Almost nothing I noted ended up helping me for the first half of the course. For the second half, I practically wrote down every single word the instructor said, which was probably a lot more than necessary. That's what ended up helping me through the course, though. People with more experience may have an easier time understanding this course, and it's taught well, but beginners will need a lot of extra help to get through it.

Honestly, this was the mos frrustrating shit ever. What the hell? why do you choose to ignore user feedback (ipv6 compression quiz bugs) and just let us waste our money? If it was not for the fact that the course content actually made sense i would give this particular course a 1 start. this is absolute bullshit because we are spending money to take this course, as well as TIME. Please, this may be an unnecesary rant but you have to look into the bugs and get them addressed.

This sucked. Please allow copy & paste function during the quizzes. IT is about being efficient and using tools, then please for the love of God, LET ME USE SHORTCUTS. Networking takes time to understand, I get it, but at least give us some downloadable pdfs with the diagrams and models from the video instead of making me SCREENSHOT every second to have models to reference. Victor, my man, thanks for teaching the course, but it needs some WORK to help students understand. This would have been hard at university, CC or online. The least they could do is PROVIDE US WITH PRACTICE EXAMPLES FOR THE GRADED ASSIGNMENTS that way we are well equipped. Rant over. Thank you coursera.

This networking section does not teach for comprehension. I feel like the topic is too broad for this certification and the lessons resort to teaching you fragments of protocols for you to memorize without any real understanding of how they apply to the real world. I had to do a ton of reading on my own to make connections between the information that was being offered, and even then I found the final test difficult to pass. All this and I have no idea how to configure a router or troubleshoot any kind of connection.

In my opinion this material was far too in depth, beyond that which is required for Tiers 1-3 Support Techs, I guess that's why the course is titled "specialist". The routing paths and subnets quiz had me stumped for 4 weeks. I solved it using Dijkstra's Algorithm. it was really quite easy once I had figured it out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GazC3A4OQTE

This doesn't feel like a class so much as a poorly written technical manual being read out loud. The material begs for a walk-through of a real-life scenario. Too much jargon is introduced before the end-to-end concept is explained clearly and simply. Many of the details need to be added only after the big picture is clear. This should be a lot easier to grasp.

This course has very difficult material and videos do not cover everything that you are tested on in the quizzes. It says it is a "beginner" course but they do not teach the material as if you are a beginner. Maybe instead of trying to be relatable with the jokes, etc. take the time to explain the material better.

The course doesn't provide enough applications for real life. It "tells" a lot more than it "shows." I really wish I learned more practical information from the Bits and Bytes of Computer Networking course.