How our young colleagues are being educated....
Dear NANOG Members, It has come to my attention, that higher learning institutions in North America are doing our young future colleagues a disservice. I recently ran into a student of Southern New Hampshire University enrolled in the Networking/Telecom Management course and was shocked by what I learned. 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? If your network hardware is so old you need a crossover cable, it's time to upgrade. In this case, it’s time to upgrade our education system. I didn't write this email on the sole experience of my conversation with one student, I wrote this email because I have noticed a pattern emerging over the years with other university students at other schools across the country. It’s just the countless times I have crossed paths with a young IT professional and was literally in shock listening to the things they were being taught. Teaching old technologies instead of teaching what is currently being used benefits no one. Teaching classful and skipping CIDR is another thing that really gets my blood boiling. Are colleges teaching what an RFC is? Are colleges teaching what IPv6 is? What about unicast and multicast? I confirmed with one student half way through their studies that they were not properly taught how DNS works, and had no clue what the term “root servers” meant. Am I crazy? Am I ranting? Doesn't this need to be addressed? …..and if not by us, then by whom? How can we fix this?
Subject: How our young colleagues are being educated.... Date: Mon, Dec 22, 2014 at 04:13:42AM -0500 Quoting Javier J (javier@advancedmachines.us):
Dear NANOG Members,
It has come to my attention, that higher learning institutions in North America are doing our young future colleagues a disservice.
Yes. Although, as long as they don't teach people that _every_ router does NAT, we'll be fine.
Are colleges teaching what an RFC is? Are colleges teaching what IPv6 is?
At the university I taught, yes. But that is in Europe, on the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, for 3rd year in a MsC programme in EE, Physics or CS. I am seeing similar cluelessness at smaller proto-universities in Sweden, where they have bought a branded course. Lots of Flame Delay. And EIGRP. Branded course. Our trainee that came out of that did prove to be highly trainable, though.
What about unicast and multicast? I confirmed with one student half way through their studies that they were not properly taught how DNS works, and had no clue what the term “root servers” meant.
Multicast, check. DNS, check.
Am I crazy? Am I ranting? Doesn't this need to be addressed? …..and if not by us, then by whom? How can we fix this?
People who enter academentia in networking, especially to teach at rural colleges, tend to freeze in time and stick to whatever fad was "in" when they were young. Especially ATM is popular, since it has, for all its uselessness, a nice theoretical undercarriage and stands on the shoulders of decades of telco style "Warum einfach wenns auch kompliziert geht?" (you will have to translate that yourself, it's German and describes engineering well) In Sweden, universities (where tuition is 0 for all citizens and can be made 0 for all citizens of the EU) the universities have a third task besides undergraduate production and research, and that is to interact with greater society. The key to good education that fulfils the needs of society is to ensure the interaction is two-way. Each course, get a industry lecturer in for at least one lecture. This, if chosen well, will make it impossible to teach Flame Delay in 2014. -- Måns Nilsson primary/secondary/besserwisser/machina MN-1334-RIPE +46 705 989668 We have DIFFERENT amounts of HAIR --
*shameless plug* Usually not a topic for this list, and together with two co-founders we started an online university last to address some of the issues we saw with higher education. We currently have approval from the state of Vermont to give college credit, credits earned through Oplerno courses are transferable to other institutions of higher learning at the discretion of the receiving institution. If you think that this subject should be addressed at a college level and are interested in teaching it you are welcome to apply as a faculty member to teach an improved course. Kindest regards, Daniël Oplerno is built upon empowering faculty and students -- Daniël W. Crompton <daniel.crompton@gmail.com> <http://specialbrands.net/> <http://specialbrands.net/> http://specialbrands.net/ <http://twitter.com/webhat> <http://www.facebook.com/webhat> <http://plancast.com/webhat> <http://www.linkedin.com/in/redhat> On 22 December 2014 at 10:13, Javier J <javier@advancedmachines.us> wrote:
Dear NANOG Members,
It has come to my attention, that higher learning institutions in North America are doing our young future colleagues a disservice.
I recently ran into a student of Southern New Hampshire University enrolled in the Networking/Telecom Management course and was shocked by what I learned.
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?
If your network hardware is so old you need a crossover cable, it's time to upgrade. In this case, it’s time to upgrade our education system.
I didn't write this email on the sole experience of my conversation with one student, I wrote this email because I have noticed a pattern emerging over the years with other university students at other schools across the country. It’s just the countless times I have crossed paths with a young IT professional and was literally in shock listening to the things they were being taught. Teaching old technologies instead of teaching what is currently being used benefits no one. Teaching classful and skipping CIDR is another thing that really gets my blood boiling.
Are colleges teaching what an RFC is? Are colleges teaching what IPv6 is?
What about unicast and multicast? I confirmed with one student half way through their studies that they were not properly taught how DNS works, and had no clue what the term “root servers” meant.
Am I crazy? Am I ranting? Doesn't this need to be addressed? …..and if not by us, then by whom? How can we fix this?
On Mon, Dec 22, 2014 at 4:13 AM, Javier J <javier@advancedmachines.us> wrote:
I recently ran into a student of Southern New Hampshire University enrolled in the Networking/Telecom Management course and was shocked by what I learned.
Am I crazy? Am I ranting? Doesn't this need to be addressed? …..and if not by us, then by whom? How can we fix this?
SNHU offers -online- bachelor's and master's degrees in such well known programs as "IT Management" and "Information Security." You can even pick whether you want a Bachelor of Arts or a Bachelor of Science. It's a -degree mill-. What level of quality did you expect in the coursework? Regards, Bill Herrin -- William Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com bill@herrin.us Owner, Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/> May I solve your unusual networking challenges?
Thankfully only about 30 minutes north of SNHU is my alma mater, the New Hampshire Technical Institute, a technical school which is fairly well known (locally at least) for its nursing, electrical engineering, and IT programs. The school's invested in a modern lab with a dozen or so equipment pods and borrows elements from the Cisco Net Academy program as well. They offer CCNP related courses every few years dependent on interest and just last year started a VMWare VCP program. We did touch on those old technologies, which to some degree do still exist in the area, but also covered all the good stuff too. I'm under the impression SNHU has a couple programs it's good at, but to Mr. Herrin's point IT isn't one of them. It's fairly common to see IT folks around here go to NHTI for skills and an AS, and then SNHU or others to fill in the checkboxes for a semi related BS. The alternative is typically a more expensive school in and around Boston. As far as the larger issue is concerned Javier, I believe it's a cultural problem where we're still encouraging our high school graduates to attend 4 year programs no matter what. The demand is still incredibly high (as is the resulting price!) for even not so great programs like the one in question. Unfortunately if potential attendees don't do their research to find out how graduates of the programs they're considering are doing in the real world, they'll end up like this. Matthew Shaw -----Original Message----- From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-bounces@nanog.org] On Behalf Of William Herrin Sent: Monday, December 22, 2014 6:54 AM To: Javier J Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: How our young colleagues are being educated.... On Mon, Dec 22, 2014 at 4:13 AM, Javier J <javier@advancedmachines.us> wrote:
I recently ran into a student of Southern New Hampshire University enrolled in the Networking/Telecom Management course and was shocked by what I learned.
Am I crazy? Am I ranting? Doesn't this need to be addressed? …..and if not by us, then by whom? How can we fix this?
SNHU offers -online- bachelor's and master's degrees in such well known programs as "IT Management" and "Information Security." You can even pick whether you want a Bachelor of Arts or a Bachelor of Science. It's a -degree mill-. What level of quality did you expect in the coursework? Regards, Bill Herrin -- William Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com bill@herrin.us Owner, Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/> May I solve your unusual networking challenges? _______________________________________________________________________ This e-mail message and its attachments are for the sole use of the intended recipients. They may contain confidential information, legally privileged information or other information subject to legal restrictions. If you are not the intended recipient of this message, please do not read, copy, use or disclose this message or its attachments, notify the sender by replying to this message and delete or destroy all copies of this message and attachments in all media.
On Mon, 22 Dec 2014 04:13:42 -0500, Javier J said:
student graduates. They are teaching classful routing and skimming over CIDR. Is this indicative of the state of our education system as a whole?
Did the standard packaged Cisco curriculum finally drop mention of "Class A/B/C" and go CIDR?
Learning how to do CIDR math is a major core component of the coursework? Im thinking that this is about a 30 minute module in the material, once you know binary, powers of 2 and some addition and subtraction (all of which is taught in most schools by when, first year highschool?) you should be done with it. Why is CIDR such an important coursework component? Or is it just a shibboleth to filter out people who cant do simple gradeschool math in their heads or just memorize the subnets (there's only 7.. I've only used supernets twice in the last 10 years..) (I admit I slow down a little when I do wildcard netmasks, but other than that.. ?) I heard tales of kids (ie under 25) learning partial differential equations in university or college as well (which I myself had trouble with but eventually got, at least long enough to write the exam!) so why is the mathematics/symbolics manipulation bar set so low in modern courses in any sci/tech stream? /kc On Mon, Dec 22, 2014 at 01:22:45PM -0500, Sadiq Saif said:
On 12/22/2014 11:11, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
Did the standard packaged Cisco curriculum finally drop mention of "Class A/B/C" and go CIDR?
For the most part yes. They still reference it for historical purposes but otherwise it is all VLSM/CIDR.
-- Sadiq Saif
-- Ken Chase - ken@heavycomputing.ca skype:kenchase23 +1 416 897 6284 Toronto Canada Heavy Computing - Clued bandwidth, colocation and managed linux VPS @151 Front St. W.
On Mon, 22 Dec 2014 15:31:52 -0500, Ken Chase said:
Why is CIDR such an important coursework component? Or is it just a shibboleth
It's partially like a brown M&M backstage at a Van Halen concert - if their coursework was so pitifully out of date it wasn't covered, you better start wondering what *else* is lacking.
On Mon, Dec 22, 2014 at 3:31 PM, Ken Chase <math@sizone.org> wrote:
Learning how to do CIDR math is a major core component of the coursework? Im thinking that this is about a 30 minute module in the material, once you know binary, powers of 2 and some addition and subtraction (all of which is taught in most schools by when, first year highschool?) you should be done with it.
So... just finished up teaching a network course because the Math/Comp Sci dept had lost professors I can tell you it was really tough getting across the idea of four bytes of dotted decimal from binary and THEN subnet masks and getting the students THEN to convert to CIDR. Many glazed eyeballs. We asked some of the students who had taken the network class in prior years and it was true that they learned very little of the things we consider basic, as Javier mentioned. The profs seemed to have been focusing on programming more than neworking per se, even tho the book they were using covered the technology as well as socket programming. We covered all of the things in Javier's initial rant and more, like the principles of TCP congestion control and the history of packet switching. It was fun being able to let them in on some real world things, like say the sinking feeling of making a change in a network and then the phone starts ringing off the hook :-) Unfortunately, this was likely a one-time deal that the students got to really learn a couple of things about networking. Dennis Bohn
Adelphi University
All networking courses SHOULD have some version of binary in them. Too many things rely on it to be skipped. Yes, in the real world we have shortcuts. But when those shortcuts become the only thing everyone knows, bad things may be left to happen. Besides, if one can¹t do binary, how can they be expected to understand hex? Anyway Good these things are here, but one thing I will point out is that there is a distinct difference with people glazing over because they don¹t understand something versus the fact that something is truly boring. There¹s nothing sexy about binary. But that doesn¹t mean it can¹t be fun! So if the classes are Death by Powerpoint (which is very typical in academia it seems), then I can certainly understand the aversion that students would have to that. Amazingly enough, for a skill that everyone SHOULD understand, I find a tremendous number of people who don¹t. And for something that¹s boring and nobody wants to learn, I have LOTS of people sign up for various sessions I do at certain vendor¹s trade shows on that very subject. So someplace there¹s a disparity in there. Now, as a side, one problem that I often have with various academic-based courses is that the people who teach them often don¹t have enough real-world experience (or not current anyway) in order to pass along any benefit in that matter. There are many things that need to be addressed at this level within the higher-education arena, and I¹m sure it¹s not just related to networking subjects! Scott -----Original Message----- From: Dennis Bohn <bohn@adelphi.edu> Date: Tuesday, December 23, 2014 at 2:40 PM To: Ken Chase <math@sizone.org> Cc: <nanog@nanog.org> Subject: Re: How our young colleagues are being educated....
On Mon, Dec 22, 2014 at 3:31 PM, Ken Chase <math@sizone.org> wrote:
Learning how to do CIDR math is a major core component of the coursework? Im thinking that this is about a 30 minute module in the material, once you know binary, powers of 2 and some addition and subtraction (all of which is taught in most schools by when, first year highschool?) you should be done with it.
So... just finished up teaching a network course because the Math/Comp Sci dept had lost professors I can tell you it was really tough getting across the idea of four bytes of dotted decimal from binary and THEN subnet masks and getting the students THEN to convert to CIDR. Many glazed eyeballs.
We asked some of the students who had taken the network class in prior years and it was true that they learned very little of the things we consider basic, as Javier mentioned. The profs seemed to have been focusing on programming more than neworking per se, even tho the book they were using covered the technology as well as socket programming. We covered all of the things in Javier's initial rant and more, like the principles of TCP congestion control and the history of packet switching.
It was fun being able to let them in on some real world things, like say the sinking feeling of making a change in a network and then the phone starts ringing off the hook :-) Unfortunately, this was likely a one-time deal that the students got to really learn a couple of things about networking.
Dennis Bohn
Adelphi University
Subject: Re: How our young colleagues are being educated.... Date: Wed, Dec 24, 2014 at 11:40:48AM -0500 Quoting Scott Morris (swm@emanon.com):
Now, as a side, one problem that I often have with various academic-based courses is that the people who teach them often don¹t have enough real-world experience (or not current anyway) in order to pass along any benefit in that matter. There are many things that need to be addressed at this level within the higher-education arena, and I¹m sure it¹s not just related to networking subjects!
When I did teaching, it was as an employee hired to do network ops first and academic stuff a definite second. I'm still not qualified to even apply to the courses I taught, but I did get nice evaluations; simply because what we taught was very connected to the NREN we ran. Thus we could pick examples from Actual Reality and make the binary -> hex conversions relevant. I'm thinking that network operations and design today is a field much like workshop toolroom knowledge was back before CAD/CAM; there is a solid and long scientific backing to what is done, in materials science, maths, etc; the machines used are products from elevated precision and experience centres, but still, you can't get them to do anything useful without a well balanced theoretical background coupled to solid hands-on experience. The rookie and the engineer from the construction dept. will both need training to be useful and non-lethal in that environment, even if the engineer can design a successful lathe. The rôle of network courses in academia, then, is a lot like looking out for the programmer with the soldering iron. People who know how things ought to work in theory are quite likely to be dangerous in practice. (and don't get me started on studio sound engineers in live sound...) It might be though, that I've simply been watching Keith Fenner on Youtube too many late nights. (That is a recommendation, btw.) -- Måns Nilsson primary/secondary/besserwisser/machina MN-1334-RIPE +46 705 989668 Uh-oh!! I forgot to submit to COMPULSORY URINALYSIS!
* Valdis Kletnieks:
On Mon, 22 Dec 2014 04:13:42 -0500, Javier J said:
student graduates. They are teaching classful routing and skimming over CIDR. Is this indicative of the state of our education system as a whole?
Did the standard packaged Cisco curriculum finally drop mention of "Class A/B/C" and go CIDR?
Has the output format been changed so that you do not know about address classes anymore?
On Mon, Dec 22, 2014 at 4:13 AM, Javier J <javier@advancedmachines.us> wrote:
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
These sound like 'standard enterprise networking technologies' (still, yes some other options are coming around, but .. there's still a shed-load of atm/frame wan stuff to be bought, and really the 'mpls' for enterprises is gussied up frame/atm without per-site ptp link management at each site, no knowledge of MPLS is required on the enterprise side of the connection)
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?
enterprise people hide in 10/8 ... why would they need to care about /26 or 27 ? everythign in their world is a /24.
If your network hardware is so old you need a crossover cable, it's time to upgrade. In this case, it’s time to upgrade our education system.
but, the cross-over cable means my network gear still works and I don't have to spend on replacement gear (yet). Remember, enterprise network.
I didn't write this email on the sole experience of my conversation with one student, I wrote this email because I have noticed a pattern emerging over the years with other university students at other schools across the country. It’s just the countless times I have crossed paths with a young IT professional and was literally in shock listening to the things they were being taught. Teaching old technologies instead of teaching what is currently being used benefits no one. Teaching classful and skipping CIDR is another thing that really gets my blood boiling.
you must require a large cooling vat then.
Are colleges teaching what an RFC is? Are colleges teaching what IPv6 is?
enterprise networking... the name of the degree says enough to know what's going to come out of the program :(
What about unicast and multicast? I confirmed with one student half way through their studies that they were not properly taught how DNS works, and had no clue what the term “root servers” meant.
Am I crazy? Am I ranting? Doesn't this need to be addressed? …..and if not by us, then by whom? How can we fix this?
you are getting a bit ranty, if you keep in mind the target of the coursework (enterprise people) then basically nothing in your mail is shocking.
In addition to my "9 to 5" job of network engineer, I teach evening courses at a US community college (for you non-USers, it's a place for the first 2-years of post-secondary education, typically before proceeding to a full 4-year university). The community college I work at participates in the Cisco Academy program which trains students to get specific Cisco certifications like CCNA, CCNP, CCNA Security. I feel like the Cisco Academy program does a pretty good job at training the students and and addresses many of the issues you found with education in US. Without knowing for sure, your description sounds like that of a "traditional" 4-year university curriculum. The Cisco Academy program focuses on being up-to-date (revisions happen every 4 years or so) and emphasizes working with (preferably physical) routers and switches from day one. I've found 4-year universities, if they have networking courses at all, cover too much theoretical material, emphasize legacy technologies, and are updated only when they must. Further, when in front of students, I always try and relate the material to either what they have experienced in their professional lives (if they are already working) or to what I see in my job regular. I try and keep the students focused on what's practical and only discuss theory and abstract ideas when necessary. I might not be able to do that if I was a professor at a 4-year university, having worked hard on a Ph.D. then on getting tenure. I think it's important to seek to be educated at schools and seek to hire from schools where the instructors have copious practical experience and, preferably, experience which is concurrent with their teaching experience. That will hopefully get you a corps of workers who are better prepared for a job from day one. Just my 2 cents. P.S. This is not to denigrate the value of a Ph.D. or academia. My mentor in my network engineering career has a Ph.D. in Mathematics and having that high-level education was a boon to his being able to understand difficult networking concepts. On Mon, Dec 22, 2014 at 1:13 AM, Javier J <javier@advancedmachines.us> wrote:
Dear NANOG Members,
It has come to my attention, that higher learning institutions in North America are doing our young future colleagues a disservice.
I recently ran into a student of Southern New Hampshire University enrolled in the Networking/Telecom Management course and was shocked by what I learned.
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?
If your network hardware is so old you need a crossover cable, it's time to upgrade. In this case, it’s time to upgrade our education system.
I didn't write this email on the sole experience of my conversation with one student, I wrote this email because I have noticed a pattern emerging over the years with other university students at other schools across the country. It’s just the countless times I have crossed paths with a young IT professional and was literally in shock listening to the things they were being taught. Teaching old technologies instead of teaching what is currently being used benefits no one. Teaching classful and skipping CIDR is another thing that really gets my blood boiling.
Are colleges teaching what an RFC is? Are colleges teaching what IPv6 is?
What about unicast and multicast? I confirmed with one student half way through their studies that they were not properly taught how DNS works, and had no clue what the term “root servers” meant.
Am I crazy? Am I ranting? Doesn't this need to be addressed? …..and if not by us, then by whom? How can we fix this?
I've gone through the CNA (Cisco Networking Academy) program at a US college and got a 4 year Bachelors of Science from there. The program took me through CCNP level courses and prepared me well for taking the CCNP level certs. They also touched on a broad swath of technology from monitoring systems (namely MRTG and PRTG), to wireless, to audio/video basics, etc. And it follows the CCNP (and CCNA for those level courses). So when those change, like they did a few years ago from the 4 test to 3 test versions the curriculum was modified accordingly. Now yes there is some emphasis on a lot of "older" technologies, but they don't know where your career will go. So while I probably won't run into frame relay much, I could. And how routing protocols work in that environment are not the same as Ethernet based topologies. The largest issue I found with my program I went through was that it simply was very arbitrary and isolated from what the real world is. And part of that is that they taught based off the Cisco courses. But it would have been nice to have some classes that were more real world interactions of how things work. For example, BGP communities or AS prepending were not touched in the courses. Or how video/voice is done in the real world (nobody really does a CLI phone system in Cisco VoIP phones which is what we were using). And we never touched Nexus stuff, which was still new at the time to be fair. We also learned on PIX firewalls and only had a few ASA's. But overall it gave a fairly good foundation to build on, which was the point for me. I believe that networking is more akin to a trade than standard 4 year program in a business degree. Every situation, career, environment does things differently. Whereas accounting is going to be pretty much the same anywhere, just with some different applications used potentially. -----Original Message----- From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-bounces@nanog.org] On Behalf Of Kinkaid, Kyle Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 2014 10:38 AM To: Javier J Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: How our young colleagues are being educated.... In addition to my "9 to 5" job of network engineer, I teach evening courses at a US community college (for you non-USers, it's a place for the first 2-years of post-secondary education, typically before proceeding to a full 4-year university). The community college I work at participates in the Cisco Academy program which trains students to get specific Cisco certifications like CCNA, CCNP, CCNA Security. I feel like the Cisco Academy program does a pretty good job at training the students and and addresses many of the issues you found with education in US. Without knowing for sure, your description sounds like that of a "traditional" 4-year university curriculum. The Cisco Academy program focuses on being up-to-date (revisions happen every 4 years or so) and emphasizes working with (preferably physical) routers and switches from day one. I've found 4-year universities, if they have networking courses at all, cover too much theoretical material, emphasize legacy technologies, and are updated only when they must. Further, when in front of students, I always try and relate the material to either what they have experienced in their professional lives (if they are already working) or to what I see in my job regular. I try and keep the students focused on what's practical and only discuss theory and abstract ideas when necessary. I might not be able to do that if I was a professor at a 4-year university, having worked hard on a Ph.D. then on getting tenure. I think it's important to seek to be educated at schools and seek to hire from schools where the instructors have copious practical experience and, preferably, experience which is concurrent with their teaching experience. That will hopefully get you a corps of workers who are better prepared for a job from day one. Just my 2 cents. P.S. This is not to denigrate the value of a Ph.D. or academia. My mentor in my network engineering career has a Ph.D. in Mathematics and having that high-level education was a boon to his being able to understand difficult networking concepts. On Mon, Dec 22, 2014 at 1:13 AM, Javier J <javier@advancedmachines.us> wrote:
Dear NANOG Members,
It has come to my attention, that higher learning institutions in North America are doing our young future colleagues a disservice.
I recently ran into a student of Southern New Hampshire University enrolled in the Networking/Telecom Management course and was shocked by what I learned.
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?
If your network hardware is so old you need a crossover cable, it's time to upgrade. In this case, it’s time to upgrade our education system.
I didn't write this email on the sole experience of my conversation with one student, I wrote this email because I have noticed a pattern emerging over the years with other university students at other schools across the country. It’s just the countless times I have crossed paths with a young IT professional and was literally in shock listening to the things they were being taught. Teaching old technologies instead of teaching what is currently being used benefits no one. Teaching classful and skipping CIDR is another thing that really gets my blood boiling.
Are colleges teaching what an RFC is? Are colleges teaching what IPv6 is?
What about unicast and multicast? I confirmed with one student half way through their studies that they were not properly taught how DNS works, and had no clue what the term “root servers” meant.
Am I crazy? Am I ranting? Doesn't this need to be addressed? …..and if not by us, then by whom? How can we fix this?
When I took my CCNA a bit over ten years ago, it was terribly out of date. That said, I beleive I was the last class to go through on that version. The next one added OSPF and some other things. At the time, though, Ethernet belonged within a building. If you were wanting to connect multiple buildings together, bust out those T1s. ----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Kyle Kinkaid" <kkinkaid@usgs.gov> To: "Javier J" <javier@advancedmachines.us> Cc: nanog@nanog.org Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 2014 9:38:02 AM Subject: Re: How our young colleagues are being educated.... In addition to my "9 to 5" job of network engineer, I teach evening courses at a US community college (for you non-USers, it's a place for the first 2-years of post-secondary education, typically before proceeding to a full 4-year university). The community college I work at participates in the Cisco Academy program which trains students to get specific Cisco certifications like CCNA, CCNP, CCNA Security. I feel like the Cisco Academy program does a pretty good job at training the students and and addresses many of the issues you found with education in US. Without knowing for sure, your description sounds like that of a "traditional" 4-year university curriculum. The Cisco Academy program focuses on being up-to-date (revisions happen every 4 years or so) and emphasizes working with (preferably physical) routers and switches from day one. I've found 4-year universities, if they have networking courses at all, cover too much theoretical material, emphasize legacy technologies, and are updated only when they must. Further, when in front of students, I always try and relate the material to either what they have experienced in their professional lives (if they are already working) or to what I see in my job regular. I try and keep the students focused on what's practical and only discuss theory and abstract ideas when necessary. I might not be able to do that if I was a professor at a 4-year university, having worked hard on a Ph.D. then on getting tenure. I think it's important to seek to be educated at schools and seek to hire from schools where the instructors have copious practical experience and, preferably, experience which is concurrent with their teaching experience. That will hopefully get you a corps of workers who are better prepared for a job from day one. Just my 2 cents. P.S. This is not to denigrate the value of a Ph.D. or academia. My mentor in my network engineering career has a Ph.D. in Mathematics and having that high-level education was a boon to his being able to understand difficult networking concepts. On Mon, Dec 22, 2014 at 1:13 AM, Javier J <javier@advancedmachines.us> wrote:
Dear NANOG Members,
It has come to my attention, that higher learning institutions in North America are doing our young future colleagues a disservice.
I recently ran into a student of Southern New Hampshire University enrolled in the Networking/Telecom Management course and was shocked by what I learned.
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?
If your network hardware is so old you need a crossover cable, it's time to upgrade. In this case, it’s time to upgrade our education system.
I didn't write this email on the sole experience of my conversation with one student, I wrote this email because I have noticed a pattern emerging over the years with other university students at other schools across the country. It’s just the countless times I have crossed paths with a young IT professional and was literally in shock listening to the things they were being taught. Teaching old technologies instead of teaching what is currently being used benefits no one. Teaching classful and skipping CIDR is another thing that really gets my blood boiling.
Are colleges teaching what an RFC is? Are colleges teaching what IPv6 is?
What about unicast and multicast? I confirmed with one student half way through their studies that they were not properly taught how DNS works, and had no clue what the term “root servers” meant.
Am I crazy? Am I ranting? Doesn't this need to be addressed? …..and if not by us, then by whom? How can we fix this?
Last time I taught, I lectured (senior-level 3-credit elective) on calculating the efficiency of Ethernet and why it was no good above 10Mbps. On Dec 23, 2014, at 15:29, Mike Hammett <nanog@ics-il.net> wrote:
At the time, though, Ethernet belonged within a building. If you were wanting to connect multiple buildings together, bust out those T1s.
Fortunately for society, I *stopped* teaching in 1998. Hope it was soon enough.
I will agree with most of the others that took the Cisco academy courses at the local community college. it all depends on the instructor. My 1st year was taught in the evenings by a full time Network Engineer. Best 3 terms I had. The problem was that year two was taught be a bunch of old guys that used to teach electronics and DB classes. So everything the old DB guy taught was how the network was like a DB. I think that getting real world teachers are the only way to fix it. unfortunately the program went away as the CC could not pay for new hardware...... Scott On Tue, Dec 23, 2014 at 12:29 PM, Mike Hammett <nanog@ics-il.net> wrote:
When I took my CCNA a bit over ten years ago, it was terribly out of date. That said, I beleive I was the last class to go through on that version. The next one added OSPF and some other things.
At the time, though, Ethernet belonged within a building. If you were wanting to connect multiple buildings together, bust out those T1s.
----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kyle Kinkaid" <kkinkaid@usgs.gov> To: "Javier J" <javier@advancedmachines.us> Cc: nanog@nanog.org Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 2014 9:38:02 AM Subject: Re: How our young colleagues are being educated....
In addition to my "9 to 5" job of network engineer, I teach evening courses at a US community college (for you non-USers, it's a place for the first 2-years of post-secondary education, typically before proceeding to a full 4-year university). The community college I work at participates in the Cisco Academy program which trains students to get specific Cisco certifications like CCNA, CCNP, CCNA Security.
I feel like the Cisco Academy program does a pretty good job at training the students and and addresses many of the issues you found with education in US. Without knowing for sure, your description sounds like that of a "traditional" 4-year university curriculum. The Cisco Academy program focuses on being up-to-date (revisions happen every 4 years or so) and emphasizes working with (preferably physical) routers and switches from day one. I've found 4-year universities, if they have networking courses at all, cover too much theoretical material, emphasize legacy technologies, and are updated only when they must.
Further, when in front of students, I always try and relate the material to either what they have experienced in their professional lives (if they are already working) or to what I see in my job regular. I try and keep the students focused on what's practical and only discuss theory and abstract ideas when necessary. I might not be able to do that if I was a professor at a 4-year university, having worked hard on a Ph.D. then on getting tenure. I think it's important to seek to be educated at schools and seek to hire from schools where the instructors have copious practical experience and, preferably, experience which is concurrent with their teaching experience. That will hopefully get you a corps of workers who are better prepared for a job from day one.
Just my 2 cents.
P.S. This is not to denigrate the value of a Ph.D. or academia. My mentor in my network engineering career has a Ph.D. in Mathematics and having that high-level education was a boon to his being able to understand difficult networking concepts.
On Mon, Dec 22, 2014 at 1:13 AM, Javier J <javier@advancedmachines.us> wrote:
Dear NANOG Members,
It has come to my attention, that higher learning institutions in North America are doing our young future colleagues a disservice.
I recently ran into a student of Southern New Hampshire University enrolled in the Networking/Telecom Management course and was shocked by what I learned.
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?
If your network hardware is so old you need a crossover cable, it's time to upgrade. In this case, it’s time to upgrade our education system.
I didn't write this email on the sole experience of my conversation with one student, I wrote this email because I have noticed a pattern emerging over the years with other university students at other schools across the country. It’s just the countless times I have crossed paths with a young IT professional and was literally in shock listening to the things they were being taught. Teaching old technologies instead of teaching what is currently being used benefits no one. Teaching classful and skipping CIDR is another thing that really gets my blood boiling.
Are colleges teaching what an RFC is? Are colleges teaching what IPv6 is?
What about unicast and multicast? I confirmed with one student half way through their studies that they were not properly taught how DNS works, and had no clue what the term “root servers” meant.
Am I crazy? Am I ranting? Doesn't this need to be addressed? …..and if not by us, then by whom? How can we fix this?
Yes when I took "networks" as part of my CS degree 12 years ago most of it was socket programming and had very little to do with infrastructure management. I don't think that has changed much talking to recent graduates. Phil -----Original Message----- From: "Kinkaid, Kyle" <kkinkaid@usgs.gov> Sent: 12/23/2014 10:40 AM To: "Javier J" <javier@advancedmachines.us> Cc: "nanog@nanog.org" <nanog@nanog.org> Subject: Re: How our young colleagues are being educated.... In addition to my "9 to 5" job of network engineer, I teach evening courses at a US community college (for you non-USers, it's a place for the first 2-years of post-secondary education, typically before proceeding to a full 4-year university). The community college I work at participates in the Cisco Academy program which trains students to get specific Cisco certifications like CCNA, CCNP, CCNA Security. I feel like the Cisco Academy program does a pretty good job at training the students and and addresses many of the issues you found with education in US. Without knowing for sure, your description sounds like that of a "traditional" 4-year university curriculum. The Cisco Academy program focuses on being up-to-date (revisions happen every 4 years or so) and emphasizes working with (preferably physical) routers and switches from day one. I've found 4-year universities, if they have networking courses at all, cover too much theoretical material, emphasize legacy technologies, and are updated only when they must. Further, when in front of students, I always try and relate the material to either what they have experienced in their professional lives (if they are already working) or to what I see in my job regular. I try and keep the students focused on what's practical and only discuss theory and abstract ideas when necessary. I might not be able to do that if I was a professor at a 4-year university, having worked hard on a Ph.D. then on getting tenure. I think it's important to seek to be educated at schools and seek to hire from schools where the instructors have copious practical experience and, preferably, experience which is concurrent with their teaching experience. That will hopefully get you a corps of workers who are better prepared for a job from day one. Just my 2 cents. P.S. This is not to denigrate the value of a Ph.D. or academia. My mentor in my network engineering career has a Ph.D. in Mathematics and having that high-level education was a boon to his being able to understand difficult networking concepts. On Mon, Dec 22, 2014 at 1:13 AM, Javier J <javier@advancedmachines.us> wrote:
Dear NANOG Members,
It has come to my attention, that higher learning institutions in North America are doing our young future colleagues a disservice.
I recently ran into a student of Southern New Hampshire University enrolled in the Networking/Telecom Management course and was shocked by what I learned.
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?
If your network hardware is so old you need a crossover cable, it's time to upgrade. In this case, it’s time to upgrade our education system.
I didn't write this email on the sole experience of my conversation with one student, I wrote this email because I have noticed a pattern emerging over the years with other university students at other schools across the country. It’s just the countless times I have crossed paths with a young IT professional and was literally in shock listening to the things they were being taught. Teaching old technologies instead of teaching what is currently being used benefits no one. Teaching classful and skipping CIDR is another thing that really gets my blood boiling.
Are colleges teaching what an RFC is? Are colleges teaching what IPv6 is?
What about unicast and multicast? I confirmed with one student half way through their studies that they were not properly taught how DNS works, and had no clue what the term “root servers” meant.
Am I crazy? Am I ranting? Doesn't this need to be addressed? …..and if not by us, then by whom? How can we fix this?
On 14-12-22 04:13, Javier J wrote:
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
My first reaction: teacher is former telco/bell labs/lucent worker and thus his own experience slanted with the old tech telcos were swayed to by telco vendors to make them incompatible with the new competition called Cisco (back then).
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...
I am a university student that has just completed the first term of the first year of a Computer Systems and Networks course. Apart from a really out of place MATH module that did trig but not binary, it has been reasonably well run so far. The binary is covered in a different module, just not maths. The worst part of the course is actually the core networking module, which is based on Cisco material. The cisco material is HORRIBLE! those awkward "book" page things with the stupid higherarchical menu. As for the content.. a scalable network is one you can add hosts to, so what's a non-scalable network? will the building collapse if i plug my laptop in? As I have been following NANOG for years I do notice a lot of mistakes or "over-simplifications" that show a clear distinction between the theory in the university books and the reality on nanog, and demonstrate the lecturers lack of real world exposure. As a simple example, in IPv4 the goal is to conserve IP addresses therefore on point to point links you use a /30 which only wastes 50% of the address space. In the real world - /31's? but a /31 is impossible I hear the lecturers say... The entire campus is not only IPv4-only, but on the wifi network they actually assign globally routable addresses, then block protocol 41, so windows configures broken 6to4! Working IPv6 connectivity would at least expose students to it a little and let them play with it... Amoung the things I have heard so far: MAC Addresses are unique, IP fragments should be blocked for security reasons, and the OSI model only has 7 layers to worry about. All theoretically correct. All wrong. - Mike Jones On 22 December 2014 at 09:13, Javier J <javier@advancedmachines.us> wrote:
Dear NANOG Members,
It has come to my attention, that higher learning institutions in North America are doing our young future colleagues a disservice.
I recently ran into a student of Southern New Hampshire University enrolled in the Networking/Telecom Management course and was shocked by what I learned.
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?
If your network hardware is so old you need a crossover cable, it's time to upgrade. In this case, it’s time to upgrade our education system.
I didn't write this email on the sole experience of my conversation with one student, I wrote this email because I have noticed a pattern emerging over the years with other university students at other schools across the country. It’s just the countless times I have crossed paths with a young IT professional and was literally in shock listening to the things they were being taught. Teaching old technologies instead of teaching what is currently being used benefits no one. Teaching classful and skipping CIDR is another thing that really gets my blood boiling.
Are colleges teaching what an RFC is? Are colleges teaching what IPv6 is?
What about unicast and multicast? I confirmed with one student half way through their studies that they were not properly taught how DNS works, and had no clue what the term “root servers” meant.
Am I crazy? Am I ranting? Doesn't this need to be addressed? …..and if not by us, then by whom? How can we fix this?
Cisco as the basis of networking material? Does nobody use Comer, Stallings, or Tannenbaum as basic texts anymore? Miles Fidelman Mike Jones wrote:
I am a university student that has just completed the first term of the first year of a Computer Systems and Networks course. Apart from a really out of place MATH module that did trig but not binary, it has been reasonably well run so far. The binary is covered in a different module, just not maths. The worst part of the course is actually the core networking module, which is based on Cisco material. The cisco material is HORRIBLE! those awkward "book" page things with the stupid higherarchical menu. As for the content.. a scalable network is one you can add hosts to, so what's a non-scalable network? will the building collapse if i plug my laptop in?
As I have been following NANOG for years I do notice a lot of mistakes or "over-simplifications" that show a clear distinction between the theory in the university books and the reality on nanog, and demonstrate the lecturers lack of real world exposure. As a simple example, in IPv4 the goal is to conserve IP addresses therefore on point to point links you use a /30 which only wastes 50% of the address space. In the real world - /31's? but a /31 is impossible I hear the lecturers say...
The entire campus is not only IPv4-only, but on the wifi network they actually assign globally routable addresses, then block protocol 41, so windows configures broken 6to4! Working IPv6 connectivity would at least expose students to it a little and let them play with it...
Amoung the things I have heard so far: MAC Addresses are unique, IP fragments should be blocked for security reasons, and the OSI model only has 7 layers to worry about. All theoretically correct. All wrong. - Mike Jones
On 22 December 2014 at 09:13, Javier J <javier@advancedmachines.us> wrote:
Dear NANOG Members,
It has come to my attention, that higher learning institutions in North America are doing our young future colleagues a disservice.
I recently ran into a student of Southern New Hampshire University enrolled in the Networking/Telecom Management course and was shocked by what I learned.
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?
If your network hardware is so old you need a crossover cable, it's time to upgrade. In this case, it’s time to upgrade our education system.
I didn't write this email on the sole experience of my conversation with one student, I wrote this email because I have noticed a pattern emerging over the years with other university students at other schools across the country. It’s just the countless times I have crossed paths with a young IT professional and was literally in shock listening to the things they were being taught. Teaching old technologies instead of teaching what is currently being used benefits no one. Teaching classful and skipping CIDR is another thing that really gets my blood boiling.
Are colleges teaching what an RFC is? Are colleges teaching what IPv6 is?
What about unicast and multicast? I confirmed with one student half way through their studies that they were not properly taught how DNS works, and had no clue what the term “root servers” meant.
Am I crazy? Am I ranting? Doesn't this need to be addressed? …..and if not by us, then by whom? How can we fix this?
-- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra
I used Stallings a couple years ago. Cisco is not the basis of networking. It is the basis for TCP/IP. -Grant On Thu, Dec 25, 2014 at 6:21 PM, Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net> wrote:
Cisco as the basis of networking material? Does nobody use Comer, Stallings, or Tannenbaum as basic texts anymore?
Miles Fidelman
Mike Jones wrote:
I am a university student that has just completed the first term of the first year of a Computer Systems and Networks course. Apart from a really out of place MATH module that did trig but not binary, it has been reasonably well run so far. The binary is covered in a different module, just not maths. The worst part of the course is actually the core networking module, which is based on Cisco material. The cisco material is HORRIBLE! those awkward "book" page things with the stupid higherarchical menu. As for the content.. a scalable network is one you can add hosts to, so what's a non-scalable network? will the building collapse if i plug my laptop in?
As I have been following NANOG for years I do notice a lot of mistakes or "over-simplifications" that show a clear distinction between the theory in the university books and the reality on nanog, and demonstrate the lecturers lack of real world exposure. As a simple example, in IPv4 the goal is to conserve IP addresses therefore on point to point links you use a /30 which only wastes 50% of the address space. In the real world - /31's? but a /31 is impossible I hear the lecturers say...
The entire campus is not only IPv4-only, but on the wifi network they actually assign globally routable addresses, then block protocol 41, so windows configures broken 6to4! Working IPv6 connectivity would at least expose students to it a little and let them play with it...
Amoung the things I have heard so far: MAC Addresses are unique, IP fragments should be blocked for security reasons, and the OSI model only has 7 layers to worry about. All theoretically correct. All wrong. - Mike Jones
On 22 December 2014 at 09:13, Javier J <javier@advancedmachines.us> wrote:
Dear NANOG Members,
It has come to my attention, that higher learning institutions in North America are doing our young future colleagues a disservice.
I recently ran into a student of Southern New Hampshire University enrolled in the Networking/Telecom Management course and was shocked by what I learned.
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?
If your network hardware is so old you need a crossover cable, it's time to upgrade. In this case, it’s time to upgrade our education system.
I didn't write this email on the sole experience of my conversation with one student, I wrote this email because I have noticed a pattern emerging over the years with other university students at other schools across the country. It’s just the countless times I have crossed paths with a young IT professional and was literally in shock listening to the things they were being taught. Teaching old technologies instead of teaching what is currently being used benefits no one. Teaching classful and skipping CIDR is another thing that really gets my blood boiling.
Are colleges teaching what an RFC is? Are colleges teaching what IPv6 is?
What about unicast and multicast? I confirmed with one student half way through their studies that they were not properly taught how DNS works, and had no clue what the term “root servers” meant.
Am I crazy? Am I ranting? Doesn't this need to be addressed? …..and if not by us, then by whom? How can we fix this?
-- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra
Well... to be accurate, and just a tad pedantic, the basis for TCP/IP is: "A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication," Vinton G. Cerf & Robert E. Kahn, IEEE Trans on Comms, Vol Com-22, No 5 May 1974 Miles Fidelman Grant Ridder wrote:
I used Stallings a couple years ago. Cisco is not the basis of networking. It is the basis for TCP/IP.
-Grant
On Thu, Dec 25, 2014 at 6:21 PM, Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net <mailto:mfidelman@meetinghouse.net>> wrote:
Cisco as the basis of networking material? Does nobody use Comer, Stallings, or Tannenbaum as basic texts anymore?
Miles Fidelman
Mike Jones wrote:
I am a university student that has just completed the first term of the first year of a Computer Systems and Networks course. Apart from a really out of place MATH module that did trig but not binary, it has been reasonably well run so far. The binary is covered in a different module, just not maths. The worst part of the course is actually the core networking module, which is based on Cisco material. The cisco material is HORRIBLE! those awkward "book" page things with the stupid higherarchical menu. As for the content.. a scalable network is one you can add hosts to, so what's a non-scalable network? will the building collapse if i plug my laptop in?
As I have been following NANOG for years I do notice a lot of mistakes or "over-simplifications" that show a clear distinction between the theory in the university books and the reality on nanog, and demonstrate the lecturers lack of real world exposure. As a simple example, in IPv4 the goal is to conserve IP addresses therefore on point to point links you use a /30 which only wastes 50% of the address space. In the real world - /31's? but a /31 is impossible I hear the lecturers say...
The entire campus is not only IPv4-only, but on the wifi network they actually assign globally routable addresses, then block protocol 41, so windows configures broken 6to4! Working IPv6 connectivity would at least expose students to it a little and let them play with it...
Amoung the things I have heard so far: MAC Addresses are unique, IP fragments should be blocked for security reasons, and the OSI model only has 7 layers to worry about. All theoretically correct. All wrong. - Mike Jones
On 22 December 2014 at 09:13, Javier J <javier@advancedmachines.us <mailto:javier@advancedmachines.us>> wrote:
Dear NANOG Members,
It has come to my attention, that higher learning institutions in North America are doing our young future colleagues a disservice.
I recently ran into a student of Southern New Hampshire University enrolled in the Networking/Telecom Management course and was shocked by what I learned.
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?
If your network hardware is so old you need a crossover cable, it's time to upgrade. In this case, it’s time to upgrade our education system.
I didn't write this email on the sole experience of my conversation with one student, I wrote this email because I have noticed a pattern emerging over the years with other university students at other schools across the country. It’s just the countless times I have crossed paths with a young IT professional and was literally in shock listening to the things they were being taught. Teaching old technologies instead of teaching what is currently being used benefits no one. Teaching classful and skipping CIDR is another thing that really gets my blood boiling.
Are colleges teaching what an RFC is? Are colleges teaching what IPv6 is?
What about unicast and multicast? I confirmed with one student half way through their studies that they were not properly taught how DNS works, and had no clue what the term “root servers” meant.
Am I crazy? Am I ranting? Doesn't this need to be addressed? …..and if not by us, then by whom? How can we fix this?
-- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra
-- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra
The Cisco "Networking Academy" program was used throughout my "CEGEP"(End of high-school/first college year equivalent in the US) education in Quebec. There was no deviation from the course work and the aim was to get the student CCNA certified at the end. On 12/25/2014 7:21 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote:
Cisco as the basis of networking material? Does nobody use Comer, Stallings, or Tannenbaum as basic texts anymore?
Miles Fidelman
Mike Jones wrote:
I am a university student that has just completed the first term of the first year of a Computer Systems and Networks course. Apart from a really out of place MATH module that did trig but not binary, it has been reasonably well run so far. The binary is covered in a different module, just not maths. The worst part of the course is actually the core networking module, which is based on Cisco material. The cisco material is HORRIBLE! those awkward "book" page things with the stupid higherarchical menu. As for the content.. a scalable network is one you can add hosts to, so what's a non-scalable network? will the building collapse if i plug my laptop in?
As I have been following NANOG for years I do notice a lot of mistakes or "over-simplifications" that show a clear distinction between the theory in the university books and the reality on nanog, and demonstrate the lecturers lack of real world exposure. As a simple example, in IPv4 the goal is to conserve IP addresses therefore on point to point links you use a /30 which only wastes 50% of the address space. In the real world - /31's? but a /31 is impossible I hear the lecturers say...
The entire campus is not only IPv4-only, but on the wifi network they actually assign globally routable addresses, then block protocol 41, so windows configures broken 6to4! Working IPv6 connectivity would at least expose students to it a little and let them play with it...
Amoung the things I have heard so far: MAC Addresses are unique, IP fragments should be blocked for security reasons, and the OSI model only has 7 layers to worry about. All theoretically correct. All wrong. - Mike Jones
On 22 December 2014 at 09:13, Javier J <javier@advancedmachines.us> wrote:
Dear NANOG Members,
It has come to my attention, that higher learning institutions in North America are doing our young future colleagues a disservice.
I recently ran into a student of Southern New Hampshire University enrolled in the Networking/Telecom Management course and was shocked by what I learned.
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?
If your network hardware is so old you need a crossover cable, it's time to upgrade. In this case, it’s time to upgrade our education system.
I didn't write this email on the sole experience of my conversation with one student, I wrote this email because I have noticed a pattern emerging over the years with other university students at other schools across the country. It’s just the countless times I have crossed paths with a young IT professional and was literally in shock listening to the things they were being taught. Teaching old technologies instead of teaching what is currently being used benefits no one. Teaching classful and skipping CIDR is another thing that really gets my blood boiling.
Are colleges teaching what an RFC is? Are colleges teaching what IPv6 is?
What about unicast and multicast? I confirmed with one student half way through their studies that they were not properly taught how DNS works, and had no clue what the term “root servers” meant.
Am I crazy? Am I ranting? Doesn't this need to be addressed? …..and if not by us, then by whom? How can we fix this?
Well let start with: Happy Holidays. In my line of work anyone with a CCNA get put at the bottom of the pile =D We're looking for proactive associates and found that applicants which present themselves as a CCNA engineer foremost are only just that: Someone that could follow the course and bother to pass it. Best deal is to get Cisco 1000V image (or GNS) and a Virtual Server (about $600 used with 72G of RAM lately, and you do not need huge amount of disks) and start making test beds for real world needs. The only drawback is that you may make the interviewer worried about his own job =D Good luck.
The Cisco "Networking Academy" program was used throughout my "CEGEP"(End of high-school/first college year equivalent in the US) education in Quebec. There was no deviation from the course work and the aim was to get the student CCNA certified at the end.
On 12/25/2014 7:21 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote:
Cisco as the basis of networking material? Does nobody use Comer, Stallings, or Tannenbaum as basic texts anymore?
Miles Fidelman
Mike Jones wrote:
I am a university student that has just completed the first term of the first year of a Computer Systems and Networks course. Apart from a really out of place MATH module that did trig but not binary, it has been reasonably well run so far. The binary is covered in a different module, just not maths. The worst part of the course is actually the core networking module, which is based on Cisco material. The cisco material is HORRIBLE! those awkward "book" page things with the stupid higherarchical menu. As for the content.. a scalable network is one you can add hosts to, so what's a non-scalable network? will the building collapse if i plug my laptop in?
As I have been following NANOG for years I do notice a lot of mistakes or "over-simplifications" that show a clear distinction between the theory in the university books and the reality on nanog, and demonstrate the lecturers lack of real world exposure. As a simple example, in IPv4 the goal is to conserve IP addresses therefore on point to point links you use a /30 which only wastes 50% of the address space. In the real world - /31's? but a /31 is impossible I hear the lecturers say...
The entire campus is not only IPv4-only, but on the wifi network they actually assign globally routable addresses, then block protocol 41, so windows configures broken 6to4! Working IPv6 connectivity would at least expose students to it a little and let them play with it...
Amoung the things I have heard so far: MAC Addresses are unique, IP fragments should be blocked for security reasons, and the OSI model only has 7 layers to worry about. All theoretically correct. All wrong. - Mike Jones
On 22 December 2014 at 09:13, Javier J <javier@advancedmachines.us> wrote:
Dear NANOG Members,
It has come to my attention, that higher learning institutions in North America are doing our young future colleagues a disservice.
I recently ran into a student of Southern New Hampshire University enrolled in the Networking/Telecom Management course and was shocked by what I learned.
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?
If your network hardware is so old you need a crossover cable, it's time to upgrade. In this case, itâs time to upgrade our education system.
I didn't write this email on the sole experience of my conversation with one student, I wrote this email because I have noticed a pattern emerging over the years with other university students at other schools across the country. Itâs just the countless times I have crossed paths with a young IT professional and was literally in shock listening to the things they were being taught. Teaching old technologies instead of teaching what is currently being used benefits no one. Teaching classful and skipping CIDR is another thing that really gets my blood boiling.
Are colleges teaching what an RFC is? Are colleges teaching what IPv6 is?
What about unicast and multicast? I confirmed with one student half way through their studies that they were not properly taught how DNS works, and had no clue what the term âroot serversâ meant.
Am I crazy? Am I ranting? Doesn't this need to be addressed? â¦..and if not by us, then by whom? How can we fix this?
Merry Christmas! (Even if slightly late...) I absolutely agree. The certification by itself doesn't prove much beyond a passing interest in networking and an ability to retain a fair amount of information. I suspect it's mostly a question of creating some kind of standard to judge applicants. It's also worth mentioning that I bet that many HR departments are actively hunting for keywords such as certifications acronyms. It was just a bit sad to see the certification itself as the "real" goal of the program. Cheers! On 12/25/2014 11:42 PM, Alain Hebert wrote:
Well let start with: Happy Holidays.
In my line of work anyone with a CCNA get put at the bottom of the pile =D
We're looking for proactive associates and found that applicants which present themselves as a CCNA engineer foremost are only just that: Someone that could follow the course and bother to pass it.
Best deal is to get Cisco 1000V image (or GNS) and a Virtual Server (about $600 used with 72G of RAM lately, and you do not need huge amount of disks) and start making test beds for real world needs.
The only drawback is that you may make the interviewer worried about his own job =D
Good luck.
The Cisco "Networking Academy" program was used throughout my "CEGEP"(End of high-school/first college year equivalent in the US) education in Quebec. There was no deviation from the course work and the aim was to get the student CCNA certified at the end.
On 12/25/2014 7:21 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote:
Cisco as the basis of networking material? Does nobody use Comer, Stallings, or Tannenbaum as basic texts anymore?
Miles Fidelman
Mike Jones wrote:
I am a university student that has just completed the first term of the first year of a Computer Systems and Networks course. Apart from a really out of place MATH module that did trig but not binary, it has been reasonably well run so far. The binary is covered in a different module, just not maths. The worst part of the course is actually the core networking module, which is based on Cisco material. The cisco material is HORRIBLE! those awkward "book" page things with the stupid higherarchical menu. As for the content.. a scalable network is one you can add hosts to, so what's a non-scalable network? will the building collapse if i plug my laptop in?
As I have been following NANOG for years I do notice a lot of mistakes or "over-simplifications" that show a clear distinction between the theory in the university books and the reality on nanog, and demonstrate the lecturers lack of real world exposure. As a simple example, in IPv4 the goal is to conserve IP addresses therefore on point to point links you use a /30 which only wastes 50% of the address space. In the real world - /31's? but a /31 is impossible I hear the lecturers say...
The entire campus is not only IPv4-only, but on the wifi network they actually assign globally routable addresses, then block protocol 41, so windows configures broken 6to4! Working IPv6 connectivity would at least expose students to it a little and let them play with it...
Amoung the things I have heard so far: MAC Addresses are unique, IP fragments should be blocked for security reasons, and the OSI model only has 7 layers to worry about. All theoretically correct. All wrong. - Mike Jones
On 22 December 2014 at 09:13, Javier J <javier@advancedmachines.us> wrote:
Dear NANOG Members,
It has come to my attention, that higher learning institutions in North America are doing our young future colleagues a disservice.
I recently ran into a student of Southern New Hampshire University enrolled in the Networking/Telecom Management course and was shocked by what I learned.
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?
If your network hardware is so old you need a crossover cable, it's time to upgrade. In this case, it’s time to upgrade our education system.
I didn't write this email on the sole experience of my conversation with one student, I wrote this email because I have noticed a pattern emerging over the years with other university students at other schools across the country. It’s just the countless times I have crossed paths with a young IT professional and was literally in shock listening to the things they were being taught. Teaching old technologies instead of teaching what is currently being used benefits no one. Teaching classful and skipping CIDR is another thing that really gets my blood boiling.
Are colleges teaching what an RFC is? Are colleges teaching what IPv6 is?
What about unicast and multicast? I confirmed with one student half way through their studies that they were not properly taught how DNS works, and had no clue what the term “root servers” meant.
Am I crazy? Am I ranting? Doesn't this need to be addressed? …..and if not by us, then by whom? How can we fix this?
On Thu, 25 Dec 2014 19:21:34 -0500 Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net> wrote:
Cisco as the basis of networking material? Does nobody use Comer, Stallings, or Tannenbaum as basic texts anymore?
I currently use a Comer book. I've also used a Tannenbaum book in the past, but not recently. My favorite book, when I've used it was Radia Perlman's. Increasingly I'm seeing a trend away from actually relying on books if even requiring them to be read anymore. This is both a trend with faculty and students. I frequently get asked if the book is required, even when the course page clearly says it is. Students and often faculty often I find rely too heavily on Wikipedia pages, which I've found myself going to update since they lead to wrong assumptions and answers in questions I've assigned. I like to augment, as many faculty do, classic or timely research papers into assignments so that students are at least forced to look at something other than vendor white papers and blog posts found in search engines. John
On Mon, Jan 05, 2015 at 08:40:52AM -0600, John Kristoff wrote:
On Thu, 25 Dec 2014 19:21:34 -0500 Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net> wrote:
Cisco as the basis of networking material? Does nobody use Comer, Stallings, or Tannenbaum as basic texts anymore?
I currently use a Comer book. I've also used a Tannenbaum book in the past, but not recently. My favorite book, when I've used it was Radia Perlman's.
Increasingly I'm seeing a trend away from actually relying on books if even requiring them to be read anymore. This is both a trend with faculty and students. I frequently get asked if the book is required, even when the course page clearly says it is. Students and often faculty often I find rely too heavily on Wikipedia pages, which I've found myself going to update since they lead to wrong assumptions and answers in questions I've assigned.
I like to augment, as many faculty do, classic or timely research papers into assignments so that students are at least forced to look at something other than vendor white papers and blog posts found in search engines.
John
Then again, no course on networking can be complete without a presentation involving ways in which things are not being used as originally designed because someone had an idea of how they could do it differently, for better or worse. (Ala the contradiction in terms that is "HTTP streaming". Routers two continents away crashing as a result of eBGP packets for interprovider VPNs is another good one.) Nor can you call a course complete without a case study of where things do not work as intended and either very large pFail is the result or where a more complicated hack fix is needed as a workaround. Especially relevant with interoperability concerns when multiple vendors are involved. Those sorts of things you likewise do not often find in text books or white papers and probably not on Wikipedia either but they are at the core of what engineering and operations has contend with day by day. (Too often people conflate "engineering" with "architecture" and while they are very much related, they are not one and the same.) -Wayne --- Wayne Bouchard web@typo.org Network Dude http://www.typo.org/~web/
On Thu, Dec 25, 2014 at 7:06 PM, Mike Jones <mike@mikejones.in> wrote:
As for the content.. a scalable network is one you can add hosts to, so what's a non-scalable network? will the building collapse if i plug my laptop in?
Hi Mike, A few starting points for interesting insight: https://bill.herrin.us/network/bgpcost.html According to the estimate, it costs about $8000/year (pennies here and pennies there, they add up) to add a single multihomed network to the Internet before you even consider the bytes sent and received. There are around 500,000 such networks. If 10,000,000 such networks were required, we would have difficulty building routers that could work. Indeed, in the 90's the Internet's 50,000ish networks caught up to and nearly exceeded the routers we were capable of building. We came close to having to triage by cutting networks off the Internet. That's an example of something that scales poorly. On the other hand, adding a DNS zone costs $10/year or less. We could add a billion or a trillion more and it might add a few million dollars total to the cost of a few root and TLD name servers. The DNS scales well.
As I have been following NANOG for years I do notice a lot of mistakes or "over-simplifications" that show a clear distinction between the theory in the university books and the reality on nanog, and demonstrate the lecturers lack of real world exposure. As a simple example, in IPv4 the goal is to conserve IP addresses therefore on point to point links you use a /30 which only wastes 50% of the address space. In the real world - /31's? but a /31 is impossible I hear the lecturers say...
In the real world you often assign a /32 to a loopback address on each router and make all of the serial interfaces borrow that address (ip unnumbered in Cisco parlance) which wastes no addresses. With non-point to point links there are other tricks you can play to avoid wasting more addresses than strictly necessary.
Amoung the things I have heard so far: MAC Addresses are unique,
Except when they're not. The 802.3 standard is ambiguous about whether a MAC address should be unique per interface or unique per host. Sun (now Oracle) took the latter view and assigned the same MAC address to every Ethernet port on a particular host leading to hideously confused Ethernet switches. The ambiguity even creeps into Linux. Unless the behavior is overridden with a sysctl, Linux will happily answer an arp request on eth0 for an IP address that lives on eth1.
IP fragments should be blocked for security reasons,
Not a smart move, IMO. In a stateful firewall (e.g. NAT) let the firewall reassemble the packets. In a stateless firewall, block the first fragment only, and only if it's too short for whatever filtering you intend to apply. Any first fragment that's not an attack will be at least a few hundred bytes long. Also, pity the fool who blocks ICMP because he breaks TCP at the same time. Path MTU discovery requires ICMP destination unreachable messages to function. TCP will screech to a halt every time it attempts to send a packet larger than the path MTU until the host receives the ICMP notification.
and the OSI model only has 7 layers to worry about. All theoretically correct. All wrong.
Not exactly. The OSI layers exhibit a basically correct understanding of packet networks. They just don't stack so neatly as the authors expected. In particular, we keep finding excuses to stack additional layer 2's and 3's on top of underlying layer 2's and 3's. We give this names like "MPLS" and "VPN." Regards, Bill Herrin -- William Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com bill@herrin.us Owner, Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/> May I solve your unusual networking challenges?
Subject: Re: How our young colleagues are being educated.... Date: Fri, Dec 26, 2014 at 02:56:40AM -0500 Quoting William Herrin (bill@herrin.us):
In the real world you often assign a /32 to a loopback address on each router and make all of the serial interfaces borrow that address (ip unnumbered in Cisco parlance) which wastes no addresses.
Why would you want to waste 79228162514264337593543950336 addresses on a loopback? More seriously, why does this discussion only briefly mention IPv6? Every client comes with it (aggressvely) enabled -- it is there despite the fat / happy parts of the networking community sitting on their legacy space and laughing at Asia. I've had, as mentioned earlier, a "cisco graduate" as intern and then colleague for a year now. He's a fast learner, and that was needed. No v6. Not much MPLS. No ISIS. Barely eBGP. No iBGP, especially not in conjunction with a link-state IGP. Lots of RIP, Flame Delay and EIGRP. There are two problems; * The academic community is either outdated or married to a vendor-specific course -- and that marriage is not very academic, IMNSHO. Academia must be vendor agnostic. * The vendor courses are too enterprisey, and an outdated enterprise at that. There is no course in "running a sensible chunk of the Internet". And this in a world where the largest innovation the last 5 years is abstraction (as in virtualisation and to some extent SDN). Not in protocols. Should be reasonably easy to keep up. -- Måns Nilsson primary/secondary/besserwisser/machina MN-1334-RIPE +46 705 989668 So this is what it feels like to be potato salad
participants (27)
-
Alain Hebert -
Christopher Morrow -
Daniël W. Crompton -
Dennis Bohn -
Edward Lewis -
Florian Weimer -
Grant Ridder -
Javier J -
Jean-Francois Mezei -
John Kristoff -
Ken Chase -
Kinkaid, Kyle -
Laurent Dumont -
Louis -
Matt Karney -
Mike Hammett -
Mike Jones -
Miles Fidelman -
Måns Nilsson -
Phil Bedard -
Sadiq Saif -
Scott Morris -
Scott Voll -
Shaw, Matthew -
Valdis.Kletnieks＠vt.edu -
Wayne E Bouchard -
William Herrin