Systems Administration: Networking
I’m not as certain with this section of the course, so I’m putting it up early to see if I can attract some feedback from you guys (the lovely Ubuntu community). It’s basically an introduction to networking, with a ton of theory and some pointers to useful commands and some practical exercises to carry out.
Go here for the source files, or below for each of the PDFs.
This will act as the main page for this weeks course material, Wednesday’s blog will have to be something else.
So your learning just basic networking? Some practical exercises that would really benefit you would be learning what is on different layers. Setup a virtualization product such as VMware Workstation/Server, VirtualBox, etc… Setup multiple virtual machines that have a different function, both Windows and *nix VM’s. Setup some servers and clients, and get a good open source routing appliance like Vyatta.
Learn different things inside the TCP/IP suite, what ICMP does, what ARP does, etc… Also if you have a chance, crimp a couple network cables, and know the difference between 568-a and 568-b wiring in patch cabling.
Perhaps learn how web browsers and web servers interact, etc…
It all depends on how extensive this class really is. I can go on and on, but I don’t want to drown you with info that you won’t apply yet.
If its like most basic networking classes, just learn TCP/IP, ICMP, HTTP, UDP, differences in cat5 and cat6, what a star topology is, bus topology, mesh topology, what token ring is, things like that.
Unfortunately with a basic networking class you really just have to study the theory behind it, there isn’t too much hands on you can do to learn the basics. Its usually everything else above that basic level that the hands on comes in.
In any case, hope that helps.
Thanks,
Justin
Some good advice, thanks.
But just so you know, I’m not learning it, I’m teaching it. The idea is to make a systems administration course that the whole community can use to teach Linux / Ubuntu based. It’ll probably take a few iterations to get right and get all the bugs out, just need more eyes going over it.
I’d add tcpdump to the list of the commands. Also, I don’t think traceroute is installed by default (?), but you could easily replace it with mtr, which I think is installed by default.
Similarly, dig could be referenced when talking about nslookup.
Oh – I notice that tcpdump is in the overview, it’s just not mentioned in the lesson-plan.
@Justin – for a basic course such as this, the OSI can really complicate things. Besides, despite knowing it reasonably well for the past 15 years (I have a cracking, extremely rude mnenomic for remembering it too), I only EVER seem to need to refer to layer 2 and 3. And 1, if you get a broken cable, but how often does that happen??
I was planning on getting rid of the specific tools from the lesson plan anyway, thanks for the reminder.
I’m not convinced that I need to talk about any of those advanced topics mentioned in that other comment. Some of them like token ring are old hat, no one I’m going to be teaching is ever likely to see them. And some like mesh networking are much more advanced, but depends on what needs mentioning.
Well, e-mail me directly any questions you have regarding this course and I’ll do my best to help. I’ll also take a more detailed look at the course notes when I get home tonight, so if you do e-mail me, I’ll get back to you with any other feedback (unless you specifically want to track all feedback via these comments).
Is it worth covering off Network Manager in this course? Or is it meant to be a generic networking course that can be equally applied to a server install as much as a desktop one?
Should you mention NAT, in the context that many people may try Ubuntu/Linux via VirtualBox/VMware?
Neil.
I’m assuming you’re describing Packet filtering firewalls. In that case a short mention in the “Packets” section should suffice. You should probably make sure you describe the layered nature of the IP protocol thoroughly:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Protocol_Suite
@Justin,
you forget some things like:
active-passive bonding
active-active bonding (aka portchannels)
vlans (diff between switch tags paket, trunk+natives)
bridging
tunnels
iptables
ipvs
bgp
is-is
ospf
etc.pp.
The good part, most people won’t ever use that.
The bad part, less people will ever use that in daily business.
There is more to networking and sysadministration then someone can learn just in lessons
Regards,
\sh
Most of what you want to cover is technical theory… new ways of considering how things function. This and giving people the confidence to get into it themselves.
@doc:
First, I can’t directly reply to your comment, looks like your comment area stops showing reply links when the thread level is >2, have a look
Second, it’s not technical theory, it’s all about the daily work of admins.
Simple techniques are not daily business anymore, wait that’s not right…if you are working in a small company (small like <25 people or so) it could be that you are still focusing on simple things.
Regarding SysAdmin work in bigger environments, you have those topics very often.
You have to deal with your network admins to deploy your servers the way that they integrate into the network environments, and bonding and vlans is not really rocket science today anymore. Even the simplest Wireless LAN router uses VLAN to separate your wired net from your wlan net.
So I think it's quite essential to know about the things you're configuring on your Linux server, and regarding the fact, that Ubuntu Linux is reaching more often the enterprise environments, we should think about different levels of knowledge.
Like RH does it, you have the simple and straight things for Juniors and the hard and interessting stuff for Seniors.
I would like to see some more courses for SysAdmins in Enterprise Environments, especially some courses with an exam…sadly this is really missing.
LPIC 1 / 2 / 3 is a good approach, now we need something more "propietary" like RHCE or CCIE or MSCE for Ubuntu Linux.
Have a nice one
\sh
The main problem is that I’m a programmer, but since I’m the only person putting in the time to write the course, I can only write it to the best of my knowledge. I don’t know anything about vlans so I need other epople such as yourself to add those parts in and send me patches (odf files for download) and whilst we may not be offfering qualifications (we leave that for Canonical) we can at least give a simpler course that can get people on the path, rather than just expected them to dive right into advanced computer maintenance and management.
I figure the networking section will be heavily modified as time goes by.