Free online courseComputer networking

Course Description

Networking is the backbone of every cloud service and web application. When a site is slow, a connection drops, or traffic spikes unexpectedly, the solution often depends on understanding how data moves through networks and how infrastructure devices handle that flow. This free online course helps you build practical computer networking knowledge that translates directly to real-world IT support, systems administration, and cloud operations work.

You will learn how common network devices behave in everyday scenarios and why their differences matter when you are troubleshooting. From understanding what a hub actually does on a network to recognizing how switches handle traffic more intelligently, you will gain the mental models needed to diagnose performance issues, reduce collisions, and design more reliable local networks. You will also explore how load balancers distribute requests to keep web services responsive and resilient, a must-have concept for modern applications running across multiple servers or instances.

Security and addressing are equally essential for working in cloud computing and web servers. The course clarifies how secure, encrypted sessions are established on the internet and which widely used protocols enable protected remote access. You will also understand how IP addressing works in practice, including the impact of choosing static versus dynamic assignments, and how those choices affect manageability, scalability, and troubleshooting in both small environments and larger deployments.

With short exercises designed to reinforce the key concepts, this course is ideal if you want to strengthen your fundamentals, prepare for networking-related certifications, or simply become more confident reading network diagrams and investigating connectivity issues. By the end, you will be better equipped to communicate with technical teams, make smarter infrastructure decisions, and support cloud-based systems with clarity.