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Understanding TCP/IP and the Internet — A 3 Day Course

Synopsis

A TCP/IP fundamentals course providing theoretical and practical grounding in the operation of core TCP/IP and internet protocols.

This course starts from the position of something that almost all candidates are familiar with — web browsing — and ‘drills down’ from there down to the lowest levels of the TCP/IP stack: IP routing, packet structure, Network Address Translation (NAT), and so on. It also offers an overview of a number of other significant issues for those wanting to understand not only the technical structure of the internet, but how to apply it in their own organisations. Such issues include: e-mail; understanding firewalling and routing; and using SNMP for integrated management of network devices and applications.

Suitable For

IT managers, developers, system administrators and technical support staff who require a solid grounding in the fundamental technologies and protocols which underly the provision of Internet services.

As useful for those making purchasing or managerial decisions over IP networking goods and services, as it is for those engaged in technical implementation.

Delivery

Course contents focus on international IP standards, dealing with vendor-specific implementations only where they impinge on the normal operation of the key protocols, e.g. as do some proprietary mail exchangers.

The course provides for hands-on practical work, but because of the emphasis on building a fundamental conceptual understanding, there is less of it than one would typically find on a GBdirect course.

Publicly scheduled dates, locations, and prices

Central London — £1175 (+VAT)

  • 30 Jun–2 Jul 2008
  • 13–15 Oct 2008

Contents

Background to TCP/IP and the Internet

  • Overview of how the Internet is supposed to work
  • Foundations: Packet Switching
  • History and culture
  • Internet administration
  • Requests for Comments (RFCs)
  • TCP/IP: open standards-based application services
  • How RFCs and other standards affect TCP/IP
  • Protocol layering: Physical layer independence, OSI and TCP/IP
  • Components of TCP/IP networks
  • The TCP/IP misnomer: it's just IP

Web browsing explained

  • An analogy
  • Initial communication
  • Lost in the post
  • Order arrival
  • Order failure
  • Webpage failure
  • Further requests

Locating Resources by Name and Address

  • IP addresses are numeric
  • Locating resources by name
  • Numeric addresses
  • Name Resolution
  • DNS, the Domain Name Service

HTTP

  • HTTP communications
  • HTTP requests
  • Request lines
  • HTTP request headers
  • HTTP responses
  • Status lines
  • Status codes
  • Error status codes
  • HTTP response headers
  • Optional HTTP response headers
  • HTTP specification
  • HTTP details
  • Practising HTTP

Conversations and reliability

  • TCP — a reliable pipe
  • TCP connections
  • Multiple conversations
  • Port numbers
  • Multiple connections from many hosts
  • Multiple connections from one host

Conversations and packets: TCP

  • Conversations?
  • Streams and packets
  • What IP does
  • What TCP does
  • Protocol layering
  • Link layer
  • Internet layer
  • Transport layer
  • Application layer
  • The OSI reference model
  • OSI and TCP/IP
  • Problems with providing reliability
  • Sequence numbers
  • Positive acknowledgment
  • Sending acknowledgments
  • Three-way handshake
  • Choosing sequence numbers
  • Naïve acknowledgments
  • Sliding windows
  • Maximum segment size

IP addressing and routing

  • Binary numbers: a reminder
  • Limits of binary numbers
  • Masking with binary numbers
  • IP addresses
  • Network part and host part
  • Network part
  • Network masks
  • Variable-length subnet table
  • Network addresses and broadcast addresses
  • Address classes
  • The rise of classless addressing
  • Classful addressing in the modern world
  • Private network allocations
  • Loopback addresses
  • IP routing concepts
  • Routing decisions
  • Routing example: single host with dial-up
  • Routing example: host on directly-connected network
  • Routing example: gateway host
  • Routing tables
  • Scalability of routers
  • Summary of unavailable IP addresses

Connectionless application-level protocols: UDP

  • UDP is a connectionless protocol
  • Why use UDP?
  • Problem domains suitable for UDP
  • Application-layer protocols that use UDP
  • What UDP does
  • DNS: a UDP-based application protocol
  • UDP and congestion control: a problem
  • Reliable UDP is possible
  • Further reading

Fragmentation in IP

  • Frame and datagram sizes
  • Fragmentation
  • Where reassembly happens
  • The reassembly process
  • Datagram size tradeoffs
  • Path MTU Discovery

IP packet structure

  • Packet structure concepts
  • IP datagrams
  • IP options
  • Applicability of IP options
  • UDP packets
  • TCP segments

IP control messages

  • The need for control messages
  • The rôle of ICMP
  • Who sees ICMP error messages?
  • ICMP message format
  • Summary of ICMP message types
  • ICMP Echo Request
  • ICMP Echo Reply
  • ICMP Destination Unreachable
  • ICMP Source Quench
  • ICMP Time Exceeded
  • ICMP Parameter Problem

DNS

  • Before DNS
  • DNS
  • Domain names
  • Domain name hierarchy
  • Queries
  • Recursive and iterative queries
  • Kick-starting a query
  • The importance of caching
  • Domains and zones
  • Authoritative hosts
  • Delegating authority
  • Mail exchangers
  • Reverse name look-ups
  • DNS protocol
  • Zone files
  • Zone file syntax
  • A record: address
  • SOA record: authority
  • NS record: name server
  • Delegating with NS records
  • MX record: mail exchanger
  • PTR record: reverse DNS
  • CNAME record: alias

Present-day issues in IP networking

  • A history lesson
  • The modern world
  • The origins of address shortage
  • CIDR's effects on address shortage
  • Responses to address shortage
  • Proxy servers
  • Centralised email delivery
  • Proxy web servers
  • Web proxy details
  • Network Address Translation
  • NAT routers
  • NAT on outgoing datagrams
  • NAT on incoming datagrams
  • NAT is directional
  • NAT in datagram payloads
  • IPv6: the next-generation Internet
  • Network security
  • Packet-filtering firewalls
  • Firewall policies
  • Firewall rules
  • Common problems with packet filtering
  • Limitations of packet filtering

Email

  • Sending and receiving email
  • Email addressing
  • Message structure
  • MIME — Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions
  • Sending a message
  • SMTP — Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
  • ESMTP — Extended SMTP
  • Mail exchangers
  • Delivering a message
  • Mail boxes
  • POP — Post Office Protocol
  • POP protocol overview
  • IMAP — Internet Message Access Protocol

SNMP: an IP management protocol

  • Network management protocols
  • SNMP: the Simple Network Management Protocol
  • Agents and managers
  • SNMP organisation
  • Object Identifiers
  • An example OID
  • Problems with SNMP

Networking training UK enquiries

UK Training enquiries and feedback form.

Networking training UK prices

For publicly scheduled training (individual places), see our UK training schedule.

In-house training for company groups is charged at a daily rate per group — see our In-House UK Training Guidelines.

Publicly Scheduled Training Locations

We currently run public training courses in the following locations:

  • London, UK
  • Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK
  • Birmingham, West Midlands, UK
  • Carshalton, Surrey, UK
  • Chester, North West, UK
  • Coventry, West Midlands, UK
  • Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
  • Glasgow, Scotland, UK
  • Harwell, Oxfordshire, UK
  • Manchester, North West, UK
  • Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, UK
  • Newark, Nottinghamshire, UK
  • Reading, Berkshire, UK
  • Slough, Berkshire, UK
  • Stevenage, Hertfordshire, UK
  • Wakefield, West Yorkshire, UK
  • Wokingham, Berkshire, UK

Most UK public training courses are available on a monthly basis.

Please see the individual course outlines or our public training schedule for details.

In-house (on-site) training locations

We deliver in-house courses at client premises and/or training facilities in any part of the world which is practically and commercially accessible.

Our In-house training guidelines outline our basic requirements and our UK pricing structure. To estimate costs for training in other countries, simply convert to your local currency and then make a rough calculation of our tutor's costs for travelling to and staying at your location.


West Yorkshire Office

GBdirect Ltd
Training Division
Bradford Design Exchange
34 Peckover Street
BRADFORD
BD1 5BD
West Yorkshire
United Kingdom

training@gbdirect.co.uk

Training: 0800 651 0338
General: +44 (0)870 200 7273
Finance: +44 (0)1353 615 174

Please call between 0900 and 1700 (UK time) on Monday to Friday


South East Regional Office

GBdirect Ltd
Training Division
18 Lynn Rd
ELY
CB6 1DA
Cambridgeshire
United Kingdom

training@gbdirect.co.uk

Training: 0800 651 0338
General: +44 (0)870 200 7273
Finance: +44 (0)1353 615 174

Please call between 0900 and 1700 (UK time) on Monday to Friday


Please note:
Non-training enquiries should be directed, initially, to our UK national office in Bradford (West Yorkshire), even if the enquiry concerns services delivered in London or South/East England. Clients in London and the South East will typically be handled by staff working in the London or Cambridge areas.