This is a little bit of a tough segment. Enjoyed it though!

a

I've taken detailed notes throughout the course, just shy of transcribing everything that was said, and still during tests I couldn't find the answers in my notes sometime. I suppose it's just one of the skills of an IT support person to look things up, but I still felt unsure whether that was the goal, or not. Still, I feel like I've learned a LOT.

About 40 percent was hard for me because of work and the questions where kinda hard if you don't remember every single thing! But my favorite part was the cloud and IPV6 if I have a chance I would have gotten it done faster in a few weeks, not two months. I did the first course in like 3 days!

The course had a lot of good material, but could have had a little better support for memorization. It is phenomenal how much you can learn though.

The course would've been better if it started with the last 2 subjects since they were much more easier than the first 3

a bit too much concept less practical

I do feel that this material was hyper-compressed, so for that reason I give it three stars. However, this course does a really good job of getting you up to speed quickly. I would like to get it 3.5 stars if I can, but the rating system won't allow me too. So, while I would like to give it 3.5 stars; I can't. So, this leaves me with giving it three stars. I can't exactly round up four stars, because I do feel at certain points many concepts were quickly glossed over. I'm under the impression that you need to do a lot more reading to do IT, so I'm expecting to do a lot more reading, right after I'm done taking these six courses.

For those taking this course, don't feel discouraged if you can't pass these six courses. This really isn't the end of your path in IT, if this really is for you. Go to a club or do some meetup groups that chat about these concepts, because IT really can be for everybody. IT is tough, the only reason I'm taking it is because my specific life situation that I'm in. I do think this was meant to be taken as a college course, but whatever, you get what you paid for. Don't be discouraged by the grade you get either, because as long as you pass that's all that matters. Most important of all, have fun. Plus, I bet in the end most if not all of us are going to be completely useless on how to do troubleshooting in a corporate setting anyways. Just keep going man.

I have mixed opinions about this course.

I will start with the good. As someone with previous technical experience, some of the shorter videos were great refreshers. Overall, by the end of the course, I was more confident in my networking knowledge that had become rusty over the years. I had even learned some new concepts I had never considered before.

The bad. Some of the explanations, examples, and supplemental reading are poor. Upon reviewing the course, I realised that basic definitions and simple analogies are often lacking or missing altogether and this interrupts the flow of the course. I found myself constantly referring to external sources to clarify topics due to the lack of clarity. I could only imagine how frustrating this would be to someone trying to learn IT for the first time!

Despite these criticisms, the course does cover the essential networking topics and is worth completing. I would recommend finding a good resource, such as a book (I used Networking for Dummies as a reference guide) or a website with better explanations. Which is a real shame because with some revision, this could be one of the best introduction to networking courses on the Internet.

I love the energy and personality of the instructor, but the material was almost entirely learn by rote. There were minimal interactive exercises requiring the application of skills. The tests were taken verbatim from the lecture content, and it's obvious the instructor is reading off a prompt the whole time. The only assignment that isn't a rote test is a paper that just requires describing the same material you were just tested on over again. This course would really benefit from a little more improvisation and visual demonstration in the lecture videos and from more interactive material in the course content. I don't feel like I'm quite as strong in networking as I will be in operating systems after finishing the lab-oriented Power User course that requires a lot of practical work.

The instructor teaching the course was great but I wish there were more visualizations during the videos to better learn all of the terms thrown at you. It would be better to see how everything is applied and with more hands on activities. There was quite a few times that I had to go on to youtube to better understand the concepts taught during this course because it wasn't easy to digest for beginners.

The material is presented in a very digestible way; however, it is very, very difficult material which requires too much ancillary information in order to fully grasp the concepts, which are not thoroughly fleshed out,

I wasn't really a fan of the instructor, and the course really could have used a lot more interactive activities. I ended up using google to learn most of the material.

While this course obviously covers a very important topic in IT, I feel it does it in all the wrong ways. For a certification course that is described as very entry level, and a precurser to taking your CompTIA A+ exam, this course is WAY too difficult and covers topics that simply are not necessary to know at this stage of your journey. Having already passed my 1101 exam, I can tell you that the depth in which this course delves into networking is not required of you for CompTIA and that exam holds a lot more weight than this cert does. For example, why are we constantly pounded about header sections of datagrams?? Does it really matter how many bits are in a specific section of a datagram header? How does knowing that information help you troubleshoot a networking problem? I mean, it's interesting background information but I can't see it's practical usefulness in a real world scenario and I can tell you CompTIA questions are almost all real world scenarios. Yet every test in this course forces you to memorize this seemingly insignificant information. On top of that, the way we're taught the information through such short videos does not help teach these difficult concepts for beginners. Several times during this course I found myself on Professor Messer's website studying videos for the Network + cert just to get through this material because it's simply not explained thoroughly by the instructor in this course. And the Network + cert is not at all considered a beginner cert and it's not required for entry level positions, so why is that content in this course? Professor Messer has several videos, some even 15-20 minutes in length to teach networking concepts, and that course is free of charge. I was able to learn much better from him than this instructor for that reason. Save yourself some time and learn this information from a better source, I was very dissapointed and beyond frustrated with the content and implementation of material in this course.

Course is literally just a huge amount of videos where you watch a guy talk. Not even remotely accessible/useful to those who are hard of hearing or have learning challenges. Almost no visual aids are used - and the few visual aids are not shared with you, so you have to dig through the videos later to try and find them if you want to look at them. The course isn't offered in Text (most of the videos have a transcript - but it's clearly autogenerated and has errors; and NONE have captions. There were at least half a dozen videos with no transcript at all! This course is more setup if you want to create Network Software than if you just want to understand the basics of networking. There was no need to force the learner to data packets from scratch, work out the exact edits to a data package during processing (like new version numbers, and what happens to each piece of data), or to learn how to read binary or convert IPv6 to IPv4. NONE of those things are topics for beginners who want a brief intro to the topic. These are all advanced things that software was designed to do for us. We just need to understand the intent - not be able to duplicate the results. Honestly, this course was a waste of my time and money. I didn't learn much that I will ever use, and I spent most of it literally searching through transcipts because WATCHING SOMEONE TALK ISN'T LEARNING! There were only a couple of interactive activities of any value. Most of them were either way too intricate (and in many cases, not actually something we were taught how to do), or were "optional discussions" with the rest of the class - although there isn't really a class because it's at your own pace and most of the posts are from some time ago).

Words are thrown around interchangeably and haphazardly too often for something supposed to be so logical. It doesn't have to be dry but I felt it was made to be so personable that info came out confusing and sloppy at times. The quiz questions felt more focused on learning your specific cue cards than the actual universal knowledge. Sometimes it felt the questions were more tricky than the info itself. Plus, when you get a question wrong it doesn't tell you what specific video to double back to, it just lazily tells you it's somewhere in the entire section. Sometimes it's obvious where the question will be but often things are thrown in randomly to the weekly modules. I found myself confused after watching 7 minute videos only to head to youtube and getting a better explanation in less time for many of these subjects. The info was basic enough for beginners but I felt it left out more practical knowledge. I learned about subnets but I can see subnet addresses on my personal computer but I feel based on what was taught, that isn't where you go to change it? I don't even know? This felt more like a data dump than teaching. I know more but I wish I could have learned more of how to apply it.

I found the instruction needlessly confusing. The instructor sort of rambled making no distinction between needed facts and ancillary information. When questioned, i was asked to respond to questions based on one sentence of content. Their was little to "drill down" on as everything was a mono-tone of boring lecture. Yes, the information was correct, but much of it was presented without benefit of instructive example. Just a little time taken to show the "how" of operations would have made a great difference. Instead, i struggled to maintain interest and in the end i settled for the passing grade ( 92 ) instead of pushing for my best. I felt like this just had to end. Worst, i started to doubt myself and the value of this course. But, shaking that off i intend to go to the next level and do well their. Bits and bytes was disappointing

I feel that the course titled The Bits and Bytes of Computer Networking wasn't really what I was expecting it to be. The lessons did not really go that much in depth and I felt that I really didn't learn the absolute fundamentals of computer networking. In most cases throughout this course, I had to find additional materials to help me understand what the course was trying to present to me. Even the provided supplemental readings (with perhaps the Wikipedia articles as an exception) failed to give me any kind of understanding of what I was supposed to learn in that particular lesson. Also, I feel it would have been beneficial to me, as a somewhat networking novice, if the lessons were more hands-on with scenarios of what I might encounter if I were in a networking role.

Honestly, I was pretty disappointed in this networking course. In my opinion, the Coursera team should overhaul this course. Just having one instructor talk about abstract concepts in 90% of the videos isn't helpful for grasping and cementing in new concepts. I'm a pretty visual and hands-on learner, and this course was 90-95% all auditory. These were difficult abstract concepts that desperately begging for visuals, animations, real life scenario videos, simulations and virutal computer labs to help cement concepts. I don't feel I've learned as much as I could have. I'm really hoping the next course 3 OS & other 2 courses going forward won't be as frustrating as I work toward my Google IT Support Pro certificate.

So far this course is only ok. I do not feel like it is giving me a solid foundation. They try to cover so much information, a lot of it very technical in a little time. They tell you to rewatch the videos and read the supplementary reading. The supplementary reading is ONLY wikipedia. And do not get me started on who scripted this--I don't know what I am going to do if I hear the words "I should call out" or "spoiler alert" one more time. The teachers, during the lesson videos seem very inauthentic. Google would have been better just letting the teachers free style the lesson.

The gentleman that led this course did not do a very good job. This entire course i was more confused than anything and had to get a lot of help from outside sources. Most of the valuable content was not explained thoroughly and the instructor would vaguely go over information that just so happened to be on a test. The jokes were so lame as well, I do not feel like this course was for beginners as was advertised. Hopefully you will all read this one day and get another instructor for this course that can do a better job.

There is allot of unneccesary talking, that makes it a little hard to follow. Especially for those who may have a learning disability. I understand the instructor in the video is trying to explain why and how he got interested into the course. But all of the uneccesary added talking should be saved at the end once we have finished the quizes and tests. I personally find it a little hard to follow when there is too much information given at a time. It's giving way to much to remember. It's almost over whelming.

The amount of course material given does not match up with the assignments & its really annoying. Your given all this information and supplement reading to digest and it feels like the quizzes and test aren't built around that. If google is going to give us quizzes and test then let the course material's focus match the focus of the topics on the quizzes don't throw an overwhelming amount of information into one section and then quiz us on half the information!

Course is taught using too much high end vocabulary. It is really hard to follow along when the instructor is using terms we aren't familiar with. Also the videos are broken down in weird lengths, there will be a few 1 -2 minute videos that work well for their topic but then a 6-10 minute video that's packed full of information and feels like its rushed and becomes overwhelming for the student.

Demasiado teórico, siquiera se vió como conectarse con un puerto de consola a un router o un switch y configurar cosas muy básicas, realmente no me gustó nada. Conceptos que no se van a utilizar como saber los componentes de un paquete. Tampoco se vieron cosas como topoligías de red. Con lo bueno que fué el primero este me decepcionó mucho