The Fundamentals of Networking Engineering – A Practical Guide is a comprehensive, real-world course designed to teach you how computer networks actually work. Through structured lessons and interactive demonstrations, you’ll gain a deep understanding of the principles, protocols, and tools that power modern communication systems — preparing you for careers in IT, networking, and cybersecurity.

You’ll begin by exploring the client–server architecture and the OSI model, which form the backbone of all networking systems. From there, the course guides you through the Internet Protocol (IP), Address Resolution Protocol (ARP), and ICMP, helping you understand how data moves between devices. You’ll also perform practical packet captures using TCPDUMP to see these protocols in action and learn how routing and private IP addressing work in real-world environments.

Next, you’ll dive into the two most critical transport protocols — UDP and TCP — learning how they handle communication, reliability, and flow control. You’ll build and test servers using Node.js and C, capture real network traffic, and compare the advantages of each protocol in different scenarios. This hands-on approach gives you practical insight into network behaviour, latency, and performance optimisation.

The course also introduces key application-layer protocols such as DNS and TLS, explaining how they secure and enable communication on the internet. You’ll then move into advanced networking concepts that affect backend performance, including Nagle’s Algorithm, delayed acknowledgements, proxy configuration, load balancing, and networking in Docker environments. These lessons are invaluable for developers, DevOps engineers, and backend specialists looking to improve application performance and scalability.

In the final modules, you’ll use Wireshark — the industry’s most popular network analysis tool — to examine UDP, TCP, HTTP, and encrypted TLS traffic. You’ll even learn to decrypt and analyse HTTP/2, MongoDB, and server-sent events, giving you the skills to diagnose network issues in complex, multi-layered systems. By the end of this course, you’ll not only understand how networks function but also how to analyse, optimise, and secure them like a professional network engineer.

This course blends theory with practical, tool-based learning, making it an essential foundation for anyone pursuing a career in IT infrastructure, backend development, or cybersecurity.