As a student I feel particularly concerned about this. Le 22/12/2014 10:13, Javier J a écrit :
Not only are they skimming over new technologies such as BGP, MPLS and the fundamentals of TCP/IP that run the internet and the networks of the world, they were focusing on ATM , Frame Relay and other technologies that are on their way out the door and will probably be extinct by the time this student graduates. They are teaching classful routing and skimming over CIDR. Is this indicative of the state of our education system as a whole? How is it this student doesn't know about OSPF and has never heard of RIP?
On the point about learning "ancient" technologies like X.25, I strongly believe it's not useless when put in comparison with newer ones . The purpose of some protocols depends on their environment at a specific time. IMHO, the evolution that resulted SPDY shows how TCP *was* relevant when you had lots of noise on the line (back-off algorithms). Furthermore, getting to know the past is the best way to avoid perpetrating the same mistakes all over. Eventually providing bases and theory of a simple communication (channeling, OSI model, error-correction, etc.). The administration's opinion is not to get hands on the latest technology (mostly pushed by companies) since it can be valueless tomorrow. On the other hand, people have to be very careful not keeping the rusty engine working. I never knew if one of my teacher was aware of the existence of CIDR notation, meanwhile he taught us about IPv6 (sadly not as a turning point with IPv4 exhaustion but more like a fancy feature). On other courses, it ended with VxLAN, LTE and multicast. I agree that SDN is becoming inevitable and is showing the tip of its nose. In my experience, I've never waited courses to understand DNS or BGP (yet they gave me strong roots thereafter). I'm also one of the few to attend networking conferences. I get a glance at a more political than technical view of what will be the future Internet, not taught in class. I believe lots students aren't aware of theses events, of the resources, and would be very interested : they just need a little boost. Some others, as anywhere, won't be very implicated going deeper than the courses. So, even if they had the latest knowledge, I don't think it would be so much more beneficial. In lab we get the opportunity to configure on high-end material. Our subjects are sometimes very restrictive, not helping to see past the few commands, not involving "creative" things like seeing everyone a an independent network, routing through some... One of my disappointments is we only work on a unique brand. I don't think we should go over a cheaper manufacturer (removing a somewhat "precious" experience on the famous one) but we should be given alternatives, the equivalent of pseudo-code : the router is only a mean to achieve : how does a Linux construct the BGP command comparing to Cisco...