This is a site for students, staff, faculty, and alumni of ITP who are interested in telecommunications networks.
Here are some things this site assumes about you:
- You want to know how networks work.
- You’ve connected your laptop, phone, tablet, or other personal computer to the internet (or you wouldn’t be viewing this page), but beyond that, you haven’t thought about it.
- You’ve done know a few things about computer programming, but haven’t done more than an intro class or a few tutorials.
- You might have learned a little bit about computer hardware, maybe made an Arduino blink, or powered up a Raspberry Pi, and now you want to know how to connect to a network
The material on this site is written for and at ITP, so the network references will often be specific to the networks here. We’ll try to generalize that where possible.
Learning to navigate networks is a bit like navigating roads. You can be a passenger by using browsers and email clients and existing programs. You can be a driver by writing your own higher-level programs. You can be a mechanic by building your own systems. Each of these comes with its own level of risk, and methods for doing it safely. We’ll give you tips on how to work safely at all of these levels as we go.
The site is divided into tutorials that show you how to do things; explanations that give you background on concepts; a glossary of terms; and a a list of resources. You can also search the site for tags like router, TCP, client, server, and so forth. In addition to the static pages, there will also be occasional news posts on the subject of networks.