I can't agree at all!! Computer networks and communications have much to arouse the passions. But the important question is what gets you going.
Here are a few recent innovations in the field that you may have heard of. All of this stuff would be in-scope (indeed, has been in-scope and published about) at the major academic conferences, e.g. ACM SIGCOMM, Usenix NSDI, IMC, MobiCom, MobiSys, CoNEXT, ANCS, INFOCOM, etc.:
- the Internet
- the World Wide Web
- Wi-Fi
- LTE / cellular packet networking
- NFC / RFID / low-power and no-power communications
- Skype / Facetime / Google Hangout / YouTube / Netflix
- Peer-to-
I can't agree at all!! Computer networks and communications have much to arouse the passions. But the important question is what gets you going.
Here are a few recent innovations in the field that you may have heard of. All of this stuff would be in-scope (indeed, has been in-scope and published about) at the major academic conferences, e.g. ACM SIGCOMM, Usenix NSDI, IMC, MobiCom, MobiSys, CoNEXT, ANCS, INFOCOM, etc.:
- the Internet
- the World Wide Web
- Wi-Fi
- LTE / cellular packet networking
- NFC / RFID / low-power and no-power communications
- Skype / Facetime / Google Hangout / YouTube / Netflix
- Peer-to-peer networking applications
- Distributed hash tables, Bitcoin, Tor, Bittorrent
- Malware, viruses, spam, worms, intrusion detection
- Privacy / location privacy / breaking the privacy of existing stuff
- social networking / Facebook / quantifying the influence of friendship
- Dropbox / network file storage
- XHR / Ajax / Meteor / dynamic Web sites
- massive datacenters running MapReduce / Hadoop / Spark to crunch Big Data
- Turbo codes / rateless codes / Viterbi algorithm / lots more stuff about codes
- MIMO / two-way radios / mesh networking
- securing radio-controlled implanted pacemakers and defibrillators against being taken over by supervillains (They Can Hear Your Heartbeats, SIGCOMM 2011)
Also, in 1998 there was a nice paper explaining the design of a new search engine by some grad students at Stanford (S. Brin and L. Page, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine). Their paper was published in a journal called "Computer Networks and ISDN Systems." I'm not sure what happened but from reading the paper again, it had some good ideas and I hope they found their way into industry somehow.
For some stimulating ideas of open questions in the field, see Craig Partridge, "Forty Data Communications Research Questions," SIGCOMM Comput. Commun. Rev., Sept. 2011, available here (PDF)
I can't think of ANY area of computer science that has produced more tangible changes for the average person over the last 20 years than networking and communications. You might have heard of the smartphone and Wi-Fi? The Web? Google? These have become pretty popular. This field has literally produced civilization-changing developments in just the last 20 years. (Can physics say that? Can computer vision?)
AI and machine learning and robotics and CS theory and programming languages and computer architecture and graphics are great, don't get me wrong. And there's no reason we can't combine these things. Some of my own work is about trying to come up with learning techniques to help computers discover new networking protocols on their own.
That is, up to this point we have had humans creating sensible algorithms by hand (e.g., TCP Cubic) to run on a network's endpoints, in order to share limited network resources between all the hosts contending for them. But the emergent behavior of these algorithms when you have a whole flock of machines running them is actually quite complicated and difficult to describe! (Indeed, the "teleology of TCP" -- the ends that it tries to achieve -- is still unknown. And at their current rate of progress, the queueing theorists will need about another 50 years before they can solve these kinds of problems analytically.)
In my work, we flip this around: the humans specify their prior knowledge about the network and what they care about (throughput? low delay? fairness? some compromise?), and computers then create the best algorithm to run at the endpoints to realize those goals. It turns out that not only are the best computer-designed endpoint algorithms way better than our human-designed algorithms to date, they are actually even better than algorithms that depend on code running INSIDE the network.
Think about that -- a computer-designed end-to-end algorithm can outperform our best in-network algorithms. That's kind of crazy (and not something that we have a theory to reason about yet), but it suggests real implications: instead of putting more crap inside the network to try to fairly adjudicate between your Skype call and your neighbors who run Bittorrent, maybe we can keep the Internet "dumb" after all, and preserve the real benefits of having a dumb network and the neutrality of network operators.
Benefits like: a college kid in Massachusetts can make a crazy new service (Napster) or website (Facebook) without needing AT&T's or Comcast's permission. By now, these side effects of the network architecture have had a dramatic influence on most of the industrialized world.
We haven't presented these results yet, but you can see some of our prior work here (http://alfalfa.mit.edu):
Or here (http://mosh.mit.edu):
So, sure, I am passionate about it! And I think the work is intellectually interesting and fun and provocative, and ties in to a lot of exciting work in multi-agent planning and economics and machine learning and resource allocation and information theory. But the important question is what gets you going. No advisor can manufacture passion and excitement for you out of whole cloth, and typically a master's student will have to be even more self-sufficient than a doctoral student to make sure they are working on a project that interests them. (The lab is not going to save its coolest project ideas in a folder, waiting for a master's student to come along and start work on them.)
I left school and worked "outside" before coming back to finish my graduate degree, and would recommend that path to anybody. If robots or vision are the things that really get you going, or you're not sure, or you need some time away to figure that out, by all means, if you can afford to take the time to think about it, that is a fortunate position to be in. Do what's right for you.
The better prepared you are to get cracking from day 1 (or at least start noodling around) in an area that seems cool to you, the more fun you're going to have when you get started and the better things will go.
Where do I start?
I’m a huge financial nerd, and have spent an embarrassing amount of time talking to people about their money habits.
Here are the biggest mistakes people are making and how to fix them:
Not having a separate high interest savings account
Having a separate account allows you to see the results of all your hard work and keep your money separate so you're less tempted to spend it.
Plus with rates above 5.00%, the interest you can earn compared to most banks really adds up.
Here is a list of the top savings accounts available today. Deposit $5 before moving on because this is one of th
Where do I start?
I’m a huge financial nerd, and have spent an embarrassing amount of time talking to people about their money habits.
Here are the biggest mistakes people are making and how to fix them:
Not having a separate high interest savings account
Having a separate account allows you to see the results of all your hard work and keep your money separate so you're less tempted to spend it.
Plus with rates above 5.00%, the interest you can earn compared to most banks really adds up.
Here is a list of the top savings accounts available today. Deposit $5 before moving on because this is one of the biggest mistakes and easiest ones to fix.
Overpaying on car insurance
You’ve heard it a million times before, but the average American family still overspends by $417/year on car insurance.
If you’ve been with the same insurer for years, chances are you are one of them.
Pull up Coverage.com, a free site that will compare prices for you, answer the questions on the page, and it will show you how much you could be saving.
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Consistently being in debt
If you’ve got $10K+ in debt (credit cards…medical bills…anything really) you could use a debt relief program and potentially reduce by over 20%.
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It’s as simple as that. You’ll likely end up paying less than you owed before and you could be debt free in as little as 2 years.
Missing out on free money to invest
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Pretty sweet deal right? Here is a link to some of the best options.
Having bad credit
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How to get started
Hope this helps! Here are the links to get started:
Have a separate savings account
Stop overpaying for car insurance
Finally get out of debt
Start investing with a free bonus
Fix your credit
Is computer networks a boring area? If you look at computer networks questions on Quora, they are sparse and just not exciting compared to other fields.
Well, when I talk to my wife about work she rolls her eyes and falls asleep.
When my best friend who is a programmer talks to his wife about work she rolls her eyes and falls asleep.
So I guess that’s up to you in the end. We both love our jobs and the work we do. We also find one another’s jobs to fascinating and “talk shop” all the time.
So why do you not see a lot of good questions about networking on Quora? Well, look at the questions people a
Is computer networks a boring area? If you look at computer networks questions on Quora, they are sparse and just not exciting compared to other fields.
Well, when I talk to my wife about work she rolls her eyes and falls asleep.
When my best friend who is a programmer talks to his wife about work she rolls her eyes and falls asleep.
So I guess that’s up to you in the end. We both love our jobs and the work we do. We also find one another’s jobs to fascinating and “talk shop” all the time.
So why do you not see a lot of good questions about networking on Quora? Well, look at the questions people ask programmers. “What are the best boot-camps?”, “Why are boot camps bad?”, “Why is Agile so amazing?”, “Does Agile suck or what?”, “What is the best programming language?”, “Why isn’t X the only programming language we need?”, “Y is clearly better than X, how is X still used?”, “How do I learn to code?”, “How do I learn to code better?”, “How do I learn to code games?”, “How do I learn to code hacks?”, “How do I learn to code my own programming language?”, “What are the best bugs you have ever seen/fixed/written?”.
But what do they ask the veteran network gurus? “If I have your xbox live gamer tag, how do I get your IP address, mailing address, Facebook password and shoe size?”, “Can my WiFi be hacked by the Russians and used to sell drugs on the dark web?”, “My IP address starts with an 8 but I’m a Capricorn. What can I do to fix that?”
Ok. So maybe not that silly but after a bit it gets that way. I actually LIKE your question. Most people, even not on the internet, ask me really stupid stuff all of the time about computer networks and IP addresses. Programmers get the same kind of dumb questions in their own fields but their field is much wider and more subject to personal opinion. “What is the best wireless encryption?” Well it sure as hell isn’t WEP and no one is going to tell you that unless it’s a cruel joke. There are some things in networking that are more subject to opinion than others but the entire field of programming flexible to opinion. “What language do we want to use for project X?” Well that’s a can of worms right there.
In addition to this, a big part of networking is “This is how X, Y and Z work. Go apply that to your current network.” So the public details are open and free. The private stuff you have to keep your mouth shut about is the pert with the questions. You can scrub the information out and post it on forums. Go look at forums on Cisco.com. The questions or normally longer than the answer.
Networking can be fascinating to some people but it will never be as glorious as programming. But I can nerf the speeds to stackoverflow and watch those coders cry from my desk. I once redirected an employee’s traffic to imgur back to the log-in page of our ticketing system. Networking has it’s ups and downs…
Since you are looking to do a Master's thesis, and apparently can't find the "next big thing" in Computer Networks, I will try to point out some areas which are very relevant right now and interesting(?) too.
1. Datacenter Networking: With the likes of Facebook, Google and Amazon taking center-stage in the Internet world, Datacenter networking is bound to become more and more important. From finding solutions to Ethernet scalability problems in a datacenter to designing new architectures (see Portland, VL2)[1][2], there is possibly still a lot of scope for improvement. Exploring RDMA/Infiniba
Since you are looking to do a Master's thesis, and apparently can't find the "next big thing" in Computer Networks, I will try to point out some areas which are very relevant right now and interesting(?) too.
1. Datacenter Networking: With the likes of Facebook, Google and Amazon taking center-stage in the Internet world, Datacenter networking is bound to become more and more important. From finding solutions to Ethernet scalability problems in a datacenter to designing new architectures (see Portland, VL2)[1][2], there is possibly still a lot of scope for improvement. Exploring RDMA/Infiniband is another option. Modifying TCP to suit datacenter needs is yet another active area of research[5]. I should point out that "innovation" is relatively fast in this space, since Datacenters are privately managed by companies, unlike the Internet where deployment of protocols can be terribly slow (IPv6).
2. Software-defined Networking: Think that TCP/IP is not interesting enough? Maybe try designing protocol/policies for your own network and see how it fares. Software-designed networking using Openflow[3], for example, can be a great learning experience.
3. White Space Networking: As the frequency space becomes increasingly congested with all sorts of devices, White space networking[4] utilizing unused capacity of already licensed channels provides a promising solution to these woes.
4. Wireless Networking: Internet protocols have been traditionally designed keeping wired Internet in mind. That's why, many of them need to be completely/partially modified to be suitable for wireless networks. Indirect TCP, Snooping TCP [6] come to mind. If you are more evil-types, you can look at designing selfish wireless nodes or still better, detecting and penalizing selfish nodes[7].
Hope that this answer would help change your perception.
References:
[1] Page on Ucsd
[2] VL2: A Scalable and Flexible Data Center Network
[3] Enabling Innovation in Your Network
[4] KNOWS - Microsoft Research
[5] Page on Microsoft
[6] I-TCP: indirect TCP for mobile hosts
[7] Selfish node detection in Wireless Mesh Networks
Wow. Where to start.
First of all, network engineers do not generally review any code. Personally, I'm different, but for the most part, certified network engineers are not programmers.
Second of all, network speeds have increased quite a bit. Unshielded Twisted Pair for instance:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.3
1990: 10Base-T
1995: 100Base-TX
1999: 1000Base-T
2006: 10GBase-T
Each increment here is a 10x increase, or between 3 (4.5 years) & 4 (6 years) cycles of Moore's law.
It's clearly doing a pretty good job of keeping up despite real practical limitations. Backwards compatibility has a
Wow. Where to start.
First of all, network engineers do not generally review any code. Personally, I'm different, but for the most part, certified network engineers are not programmers.
Second of all, network speeds have increased quite a bit. Unshielded Twisted Pair for instance:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.3
1990: 10Base-T
1995: 100Base-TX
1999: 1000Base-T
2006: 10GBase-T
Each increment here is a 10x increase, or between 3 (4.5 years) & 4 (6 years) cycles of Moore's law.
It's clearly doing a pretty good job of keeping up despite real practical limitations. Backwards compatibility has a lot to do with that. I'm using UTP Ethernet as an example, but other protocols could also be examined.
I am very passionate about this field, I assure you. Security, Reliability, Redundancy, & Flexibility are all a big deal, subject to immediate reality tests. Between liability and reputation damage they can bring a company to its knees. I'm sorry you haven't met anyone like me before, but I can assure you we do exist.
At the end of the day, practicing Network Engineers are more on the applied side. A lot of programmers are also on the applied side, but they generally do not risk reputation like the network people. The tests offered to us are often much more immediate and the stakes are often a lot higher than meeting a development deadline that can be extended.
We're kind of like the Coast Guard; no one appreciates us until they need us.
Well, yes, and no!
The no part:
Computer networking has not evolved for years due to an stupid main-frame model that status quo is pushing for. Computer networks used to be defined as protocols, that are so simple at core but too complex in boilerplate. For example, there are many protocols for finding a shortest path in a network each specified in a large document, and funnily their core (the Dijkstra algorithm) can be explained in a page. And when you engage in a talk with network researchers and engineers, you'll hear lots and lots of boring discussions about these protocols.
Network educati
Well, yes, and no!
The no part:
Computer networking has not evolved for years due to an stupid main-frame model that status quo is pushing for. Computer networks used to be defined as protocols, that are so simple at core but too complex in boilerplate. For example, there are many protocols for finding a shortest path in a network each specified in a large document, and funnily their core (the Dijkstra algorithm) can be explained in a page. And when you engage in a talk with network researchers and engineers, you'll hear lots and lots of boring discussions about these protocols.
Network education in the industry is based on the same shit. lots and lots of protocols, lots and lots of false arguments, ....
The yes part:
You probably have heard about Software Defined Networking (SDN) which basically aims at ending this boring discussion about protocols. I know, I know, SDN is hyped, not well defined, ... but, in essence, when you can program your network via commodity software, you can define your own way of managing the network, your own optimizations, your own algorithms, ...
"network defined by software" is disrupting the "network defined by protocols", and it will extensively change the field.
I strongly encourage you to watch this:
One fun fact / story about networking. A former student of ours was a HVAC professional. (heating and cooling) He ended up taking a few courses in networking to get up to speed on all the smart thermostats and the networking between thermostats, cooling systems for server rooms etc.. Here is a guy that found a way to connect hvac and networking. the point i am making here is that networking is involved in everything we do and will continue to do so. Boring in some areas? Unlimited potential? i think so, you could do your statement on the future integrations between networking and other
One fun fact / story about networking. A former student of ours was a HVAC professional. (heating and cooling) He ended up taking a few courses in networking to get up to speed on all the smart thermostats and the networking between thermostats, cooling systems for server rooms etc.. Here is a guy that found a way to connect hvac and networking. the point i am making here is that networking is involved in everything we do and will continue to do so. Boring in some areas? Unlimited potential? i think so, you could do your statement on the future integrations between networking and other areas that may or may not be as obvious as HVAC.
Lute Atieh, former network designer
Chief Operations Officer
American Business & Technology University
American Business and Technology University
I once met a man who drove a modest Toyota Corolla, wore beat-up sneakers, and looked like he’d lived the same way for decades. But what really caught my attention was when he casually mentioned he was retired at 45 with more money than he could ever spend. I couldn’t help but ask, “How did you do it?”
He smiled and said, “The secret to saving money is knowing where to look for the waste—and car insurance is one of the easiest places to start.”
He then walked me through a few strategies that I’d never thought of before. Here’s what I learned:
1. Make insurance companies fight for your business
Mos
I once met a man who drove a modest Toyota Corolla, wore beat-up sneakers, and looked like he’d lived the same way for decades. But what really caught my attention was when he casually mentioned he was retired at 45 with more money than he could ever spend. I couldn’t help but ask, “How did you do it?”
He smiled and said, “The secret to saving money is knowing where to look for the waste—and car insurance is one of the easiest places to start.”
He then walked me through a few strategies that I’d never thought of before. Here’s what I learned:
1. Make insurance companies fight for your business
Most people just stick with the same insurer year after year, but that’s what the companies are counting on. This guy used tools like Coverage.com to compare rates every time his policy came up for renewal. It only took him a few minutes, and he said he’d saved hundreds each year by letting insurers compete for his business.
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2. Take advantage of safe driver programs
He mentioned that some companies reward good drivers with significant discounts. By signing up for a program that tracked his driving habits for just a month, he qualified for a lower rate. “It’s like a test where you already know the answers,” he joked.
You can find a list of insurance companies offering safe driver discounts here and start saving on your next policy.
3. Bundle your policies
He bundled his auto insurance with his home insurance and saved big. “Most companies will give you a discount if you combine your policies with them. It’s easy money,” he explained. If you haven’t bundled yet, ask your insurer what discounts they offer—or look for new ones that do.
4. Drop coverage you don’t need
He also emphasized reassessing coverage every year. If your car isn’t worth much anymore, it might be time to drop collision or comprehensive coverage. “You shouldn’t be paying more to insure the car than it’s worth,” he said.
5. Look for hidden fees or overpriced add-ons
One of his final tips was to avoid extras like roadside assistance, which can often be purchased elsewhere for less. “It’s those little fees you don’t think about that add up,” he warned.
The Secret? Stop Overpaying
The real “secret” isn’t about cutting corners—it’s about being proactive. Car insurance companies are counting on you to stay complacent, but with tools like Coverage.com and a little effort, you can make sure you’re only paying for what you need—and saving hundreds in the process.
If you’re ready to start saving, take a moment to:
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I being a passionate about Computer Network, will say "NO". Computer Networking is not a boring area. As you told that you are interested in doing Masters in this field, I want to point out to you new, interesting and emerging technology on the same.
=> Data Center Networking: Lots of innovation is happening recently in Data Center because of Cloud and Virtualization.
=> Cloud and Virtualization
=> Software Defined Networking (SDN) & Networking Functional Virtualization (NFV): These are the most talked technology of the current days. SDN and NFV helps big scale network maintenance easy.
=>
I being a passionate about Computer Network, will say "NO". Computer Networking is not a boring area. As you told that you are interested in doing Masters in this field, I want to point out to you new, interesting and emerging technology on the same.
=> Data Center Networking: Lots of innovation is happening recently in Data Center because of Cloud and Virtualization.
=> Cloud and Virtualization
=> Software Defined Networking (SDN) & Networking Functional Virtualization (NFV): These are the most talked technology of the current days. SDN and NFV helps big scale network maintenance easy.
=> VXLAN: VXLAN is to overcome the limitation of VLAN (i.e. 4096). Using VXLAN we can create 16 million VNIs.
=> Distributed Network: Hadoop.
I'm the question asker.
I spent two years doing my Masters, where I dabbled with Computer Networking, amongst other fields. I'd like to share my viewpoint.
Computer Networking is quite a mature field in CS now. If you compare with other areas, it's relatively moving slower. This, I felt, was one reason I found it a little less exciting.
One reason I found it interesting, on the other hand, is how well I understood the internet, and immediately seeing the practical applications of my knowledge.
A lot of areas surrounding networking are experiencing quite a lot of challenging problems. Areas like c
I'm the question asker.
I spent two years doing my Masters, where I dabbled with Computer Networking, amongst other fields. I'd like to share my viewpoint.
Computer Networking is quite a mature field in CS now. If you compare with other areas, it's relatively moving slower. This, I felt, was one reason I found it a little less exciting.
One reason I found it interesting, on the other hand, is how well I understood the internet, and immediately seeing the practical applications of my knowledge.
A lot of areas surrounding networking are experiencing quite a lot of challenging problems. Areas like cloud computing and IoT need a thorough networking knowledge, along with a combination of several other fields. These areas I found exciting, since there seemed to be a lot of unsolved and evolving challenges. I still found core networking areas like networking services and protocols to be not very interesting, because there seemed to be less thinking involved and more knowing involved.
If you want to write better essays, it’s helpful to understand the criteria teachers use to score them. Instead of solely focusing on the grade you are given, focus on how you are being graded and how you can improve, even if you are already getting a high grade.
Development of Your Thesis
A thesis is the essence of your paper—the claim you are making, the point you are trying to prove. All the other paragraphs in your essay will revolve around this one central idea. Your thesis statement consists of the one or two sentences of your introduction that explain what your position on the topic at ha
If you want to write better essays, it’s helpful to understand the criteria teachers use to score them. Instead of solely focusing on the grade you are given, focus on how you are being graded and how you can improve, even if you are already getting a high grade.
Development of Your Thesis
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Strong Form
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Well, Interesting or boring totally depends on a person's interest however I personally find it fascinating. Let's see what all is being achieved with computer networks :
1.) We have the Internet!!
2.)We can play games like COD,Age of Empires,CS,etc
3.)Video Conferencing is possible
4.)Online Banking , Online Shopping,E-Ticket is possible
5.)ATM machine are available otherwise we would have to go to banks and stand in big queues to withdraw money :/
6.)All military sensor node are linked through computer networks to keep track of motion and relay information..
Taking about Robotics,have you e
Well, Interesting or boring totally depends on a person's interest however I personally find it fascinating. Let's see what all is being achieved with computer networks :
1.) We have the Internet!!
2.)We can play games like COD,Age of Empires,CS,etc
3.)Video Conferencing is possible
4.)Online Banking , Online Shopping,E-Ticket is possible
5.)ATM machine are available otherwise we would have to go to banks and stand in big queues to withdraw money :/
6.)All military sensor node are linked through computer networks to keep track of motion and relay information..
Taking about Robotics,have you ever though about a swarm of robots working as a single unit to achieve some task where each robot could be linked to each other via computer networks.
Another use could be a building containing cameras at various angles and multiple computer running Image Processing Algorithm to monitor motion.Now what do get if we are able to merge all these computer nodes together as a unit using networks ? 360 degree of camera vision !!
The possibilities with computer networks is limitless...The basic idea is communication and if we look around in the world at people,relationships,information or anything else..everything comes down to communication.
We can say that networks is a backbone that is supporting all the tech we have around.Though implementing stuff and using them are two totally different things ;)
Boring? Not at all! I know people who have been in computer networks for decades. It's an amazing world, the final frontier of IT geekery, nerdism, and hacking. It's the world where data science will get the better of you, where the only way to understand anything is to keep a firm grasp of 7 layers of architecture, where reliability analysis simply can't work in closed form, and simulation is perceived as the solution to every problem and every question, where everybody thinks of each problem in half a dozen different ways, never overlapping with others.
If computer networking is not your calling or something that interests you then the answer is probably yes. But that can be said for any industry.
Any man probably can attest to the day they tried to tell their mate about something they thought was interesting about the field they work in... only to hear the dreaded words, "well, that's nice honey".
Proof that anything can be boring if you're not into it
It’s as boring as you make it to be. Think of computer networks as a creative endeavor. It takes some talent to get the right balance of firewall protection into and out of a LAN network in this modern world. Just like anything artistic or technical, the more you do it and perfect your approach, the better you will be able to help answer questions and become the authority or expert! Leonardo did not start out being an expert at his craft on day one.
I did a masters degree in networking just out of curiosity of the concepts. Networking requires extreme dedication as a small mistake could bring down the entire network. I have worked on applications side as well and for me networking is far more interesting. Just the thought of packets moving from a source to destination with multiple protocols and technologies in between is intriguing for me. It can drive you nuts at times, but extremely interesting.
The simple answer: no.
The more elaborate answer: no, because if you think about it, networking is the foundation of the Internet as we know it, which is the very reason you were able to ask this question in the first place, and I'm able to give you an answer. Networking has come a long a way from the first academic networks in the 1980s to what it is now. We live in a world of permanent connectivity - smartphones, tablets, wearables. The basis for this connectivity is networking. With the dawn of IoT going big, networking will be even more important.
I dont think so….
It depends on your interest . A computer geek will not think so. IT sector is fastest growing sector especially in India . According to a short survey , India wil need 100000 pen tester and Computer networks experts .At last , Don't think about stupid answers that are present on quora.
Personally, I find it fascinating. My own view is that far too many networks have been set up / are being managed by people that really don't have sufficient knowledge of the technical aspects; and as a result, there are significant isues with performance.
Ther are lots of areas of inovation; we are seeing a slow migration to IPv6, there is an increase in the use of Fibre connections, switching gear is being improved, as is Wireless technology. A lot of security is predicated upon networks.
There is nothing boring on this planet. It depends on your own interests. Many people don't like Opera music but some find very much interesting and they simply love it. Hence, rather than saying networking is boring, you must do what you find is interesting.
Jennifer Rexford Princeton University had written a very nice article in SIGCOMM titled "Network Philosophers Problem". The paper talks about what networking is and what it should be. More importantly it identified the contributions networking makes to other fields.
So no, networking is not boring but a wide open field with many interesting problems.
You can find the paper here: Page on princeton.edu
It depends; programming certainly has its boring parts. It’s like being a race car driver who’s also a mechanic — you’re looking forward to driving, but you have to build the car first, and getting the tires on isn’t as exciting as painting the racing stripes. Most coders don’t even get to drive the car — when the app is finished, it goes to customers and may not be something you’re interested in running yourself.
Maybe, like myself, you’re interested in graphics apps. There may come a time you’ll need to add code to read third-party image formats. So you’ll spend a few days figuring out how to
It depends; programming certainly has its boring parts. It’s like being a race car driver who’s also a mechanic — you’re looking forward to driving, but you have to build the car first, and getting the tires on isn’t as exciting as painting the racing stripes. Most coders don’t even get to drive the car — when the app is finished, it goes to customers and may not be something you’re interested in running yourself.
Maybe, like myself, you’re interested in graphics apps. There may come a time you’ll need to add code to read third-party image formats. So you’ll spend a few days figuring out how to compile, link, and make calls into e.g. the PNG library, then repeat for libJPEG, etc. It’s boring. But on the plus side, it’s a one-time thing and you learn something.
If you’re lucky, the car you’re building is something new whose parts never existed yet. Building those can be exciting.
Well, imagine sitting in a room with a laptop and a fiber internet connection. You will keep yourself occupied for days.
Now add a VR headset which can stream videos that show the beautiful landscapes, universe, water world etc. You will forget which one is the real world.
Sitting in one room and being able to connect with the world, that's the power of computer networking.
Is it boring to learn ? We'll if you know what you can achieve with it you will never get bored.
What’s boring to one person can be endlessly fascinating to another. Like me. That’s like asking is golf a boring sport? To lots of people it is. But for millions of others, it isn’t.
You can only answer for yourself if it would be boring for you.
No, Not at all. Computer network is a really interesting field as there are so many interesting facts and things are in computer networks. There are a lot of things to learn about in it like exotic technologies, wireless technologies, firewalls, communication protocols like IEEE 802, Ethernet, Wireless LAN, Asynchronous Transfer Mode etc.
No. It is a relatively difficult field if you aren’t particularly mathematical, but I wouldn’t call it boring, unless you find math boring.
To put that it perspective, when I worked at Intel, one of the teams I worked with did cryptography (not that I did it) and one of my colleagues shared with me a paper he thought I would be interested in. He was right in that respect, but I think he over-estimated my mathematical abilities by a factor of at least 2x, probably more like a factor of 10x. So, I started reading the paper. It truly was interesting. But somewhere around about page 25, I ran into
No. It is a relatively difficult field if you aren’t particularly mathematical, but I wouldn’t call it boring, unless you find math boring.
To put that it perspective, when I worked at Intel, one of the teams I worked with did cryptography (not that I did it) and one of my colleagues shared with me a paper he thought I would be interested in. He was right in that respect, but I think he over-estimated my mathematical abilities by a factor of at least 2x, probably more like a factor of 10x. So, I started reading the paper. It truly was interesting. But somewhere around about page 25, I ran into the first term that I didn’t completely understand (affine). However, in context I was able to work out what was meant. So, I kept reading. Eventually, I ran into more words that weren’t in my vocabulary, each getting a little harder to understand. Until I got to somewhere around page 100. (I told you it was interesting.) And, at that point, I realized I was reading the page and yet not grasping a thing that was being said. I had to put the paper down. It was just beyond what I could comprehend, at least not without taking a course or two or three or ….
I don't think that the computer networking is boring at all. Can you imagine a world now without emails, online newspapers, blogs, chat and the other services offered by the Internet.
Yes it is too boring that people dont know that they are able to communicate through internet only because of networking .
Personally, I am truly, truly staggered when I hear people imply that the telecommunications industry is in decline. This cannot be further than the truth.
In fact the ubiquity of telecoms positions the industry closer to an industry such as banking where everyone knows that it is there but few on the outside really appreciate how the mechanics of it work. What we do might not excite the average person on the street but the industry tackles almost insurmountable challenges time and time again, our work changes the world and enables new forms of business and human interaction and it is intelle
Personally, I am truly, truly staggered when I hear people imply that the telecommunications industry is in decline. This cannot be further than the truth.
In fact the ubiquity of telecoms positions the industry closer to an industry such as banking where everyone knows that it is there but few on the outside really appreciate how the mechanics of it work. What we do might not excite the average person on the street but the industry tackles almost insurmountable challenges time and time again, our work changes the world and enables new forms of business and human interaction and it is intellectually difficult which means that there will be very well-paid work in this sector for the foreseeable future.
Investors look at the dwindling profit margins and see problems but the other side of this is our increasingly advanced patterns of consumption.
In 1990, we could expect that a typical, affordable domestic data connection might offer about 10kbps of bandwidth via dial-up.
In 2000, speeds of over 1mbps became achieveable with DSL and cablemodem.
In 2010, speeds of 100mbps over fibre were possible (both with FTTP and FTTC by using VDSL/DOCSIS3 for the last mile).
Think about that for a second...
If the speed of aeroplanes followed that trend for a decade, it would only take three minutes to fly from London to New York.
We have not only been making this kind of progress for a generation, we have been doing it while keeping the price to the end user roughly the same.
No-one who is really familiar with our industry would really believe that it is dead and boring. It is just that most people are not interested and don't understand what we do.
No, I would argue that it’s a boring field in applied mathematics, not in computer science. Any reasonably intelligent mathematician who can get a job in a CS department would do so, because we’re paid better, if nothing else. (This is intended to be somewhat sarcastic.)
OK, earnest answer: Cryptography depends on a fairly sophisticated understanding of mathematics. We don’t teach much detail in a typical undergrad CS program because few students are prepared to tackle the work of modern cryptographic algorithms. It’s more likely to be taught at the postgraduate level to interested students, so
No, I would argue that it’s a boring field in applied mathematics, not in computer science. Any reasonably intelligent mathematician who can get a job in a CS department would do so, because we’re paid better, if nothing else. (This is intended to be somewhat sarcastic.)
OK, earnest answer: Cryptography depends on a fairly sophisticated understanding of mathematics. We don’t teach much detail in a typical undergrad CS program because few students are prepared to tackle the work of modern cryptographic algorithms. It’s more likely to be taught at the postgraduate level to interested students, some of whom elected to take more mathematics courses than a typical CS major. A colleague of mine has students implement (IIRC) RC4, and it did not seem like the students had much fun.
If you’re intimidated by mathematics, like me, you’ll tend to disengage from mathematics, like me, and you’ll therefore find the material boring, like me. As I’ve addressed my intimidation, I have studied more mathematics and found it much more interesting than I would have believed. I wish I could help students deal with their math anxiety; it took me far too long to even recognize my own.
It’s fine to not be interested in a particular field in CS. It’s even fine to be bored by a field. However, realize that what you’re really speaking about is you, not the field. The more vocal you are, the more you’re speaking loudly about yourself. It’s generally wiser to talk about what does interest you than to criticize what doesn’t.
First of all, kudos for asking about your career path and your preference of career before jumping into it just because everyone else is doing it.
From an industry perspective, constant changes are happening - optimization of speeds, increasing capacity, more OTT services etc.
However, typically, the changes are subtle and when rolled out, they impact different elements and not much changes from an overall architecture perspective. So, an average working day in the lofe of a telecom engineer entails either designing features for the small minuscule element he/she works on or coding for these or
First of all, kudos for asking about your career path and your preference of career before jumping into it just because everyone else is doing it.
From an industry perspective, constant changes are happening - optimization of speeds, increasing capacity, more OTT services etc.
However, typically, the changes are subtle and when rolled out, they impact different elements and not much changes from an overall architecture perspective. So, an average working day in the lofe of a telecom engineer entails either designing features for the small minuscule element he/she works on or coding for these or testing these ( if they are in R&D) or deploying them sitting in a cube in office. Its rare that you physically do any electric checks. Most telecom engineers have never seen what the hardware inside a tower cabinet looks like. At an airport, a telecom engineer, even when working, will look like a normal dude playing on his laptop. This probably takes away the fantasy and charm of the job.
In summary, changes are happening - but turn over times for projects are higher and changes are incremental. But the field is certainly not dying/dead.
Thanks for A2A.
Wow ... interesting, and rather off-putting set of answers. I guess they want you to RTFM or Google until you're a genius, huh? Rather than express simple (and justifiable) frustration in an online forum. Got that message, did you? (grin)
'Kayso ... Your frustration is 100% justifiable. And manufacturers should listen to it, and make this crap work better for home users (and hopefully, by extension, for 98% of IT personnel, coders, and ostensible 'professionals'). As you've correctly noted, even after generations of evolution, there remain a few nests of hair-pulling insanity in the home and pe
Wow ... interesting, and rather off-putting set of answers. I guess they want you to RTFM or Google until you're a genius, huh? Rather than express simple (and justifiable) frustration in an online forum. Got that message, did you? (grin)
'Kayso ... Your frustration is 100% justifiable. And manufacturers should listen to it, and make this crap work better for home users (and hopefully, by extension, for 98% of IT personnel, coders, and ostensible 'professionals'). As you've correctly noted, even after generations of evolution, there remain a few nests of hair-pulling insanity in the home and personal/mobile computing space, including networks and, oddly, printers (though some of the latter, we can blame on networks, too).
At the 90,000-foot level, the reason for this can be summarized simply as: 1) networking is pretty complicated, with a deep protocol stack. 2) Networking is quickly shifting to software-driven and/or denser system-on-chip forms (so people are rewriting stuff to work better and/or be cheaper, which sometimes breaks it or makes it incompatible with other stuff), or incorporating new virtualized pathways that add further complexity (e.g., iptables or any SDN), but meanwhile 3) Networking is mission-critical as regards authentication and security, which imposes new constraints and tends to shape code towards paranoid behaviors and fragile responses (i.e., 'Who are you? I can't talk to you!' vs. 'Hai!!!!' or 'What do you mean I'm not running as root? I can't do an ARP flush safely if I'm not root? What are you, nuts?') 4) Nobody can test everything against everything for every use-case, and in a proliferative market, that means consumers routinely encounter stuff the engineers waved away, because 'standards' (e.g., iPad 3 Bluetooth vs. the Bluetooth interface on my stereo, which works great with Android -- you would think Apple and Panasonic would mutually test their interop, but ... no.) and 5) Business and market pressures force people to release products that are flaky.
Also, as you've noticed, though various folks have written various tools to analyze and debug network issues, for various reasons these mostly can't help (yet) except in the very simplest cases. e.g., Network Troubleshooting on Windows, which, as far as I can tell, throws up a set of messages to make you feel it's busy (maybe it pings 8.8.8.8 to see if it has a route to Google's DNS or something) and then resets your network card for good measure, tries the ping again, and reports success or failure (at which point, if it fails, you should try restarting your cable modem - trust me on this, I'm a professional). Meanwhile, on a home network, each piece of equipment has its own little configuration, its own little webserver to show you a distorted and incomplete view of that configuration, various layers of security preventing any kind of "toplevel" view of its activity, etc. Basically, if you hit an intractable problem as a consumer, you're reduced to 'doing spooky, random things' (like turning things off and on again, which actually works some of the time).
Meanwhile, an actual Network Engineer(tm) would pull out WireShark and instrument anything instrumentable and carefully analyze the protocols on both sides of each separate connection and after two hours, would say: "Look -- this TianFu (or Cisco, let's face it) home router of yours is supposed to be giving us an IP address, and it's just not doing it a third of the time. Not sure why, but I think you should toss it and get a (Cisco, if TianFu; TianFu if Cisco)." And that is good advice from a (cough) professional.
The reason these pros are so snippy, meanwhile, is that -- beyond knowing a little more jargon and having attended a few more rodeos than you -- they do several things you don't do: 1) they tend to defend the value of their time by rarely doing anything super-ambitious with cheap home equipment, or -- if they do -- they know the penalty, and they know how to consult the deep internet for fixes, which they _sometimes_ find. 2) they shop really carefully, using the deep internet, and try to know that product X and product Y will work together before buying them. 3) If something doesn't work, they have the personality that will take five hours (days?) of real life and devote it to figuring out what's wrong. 4) professionally, they work with datacenter-grade network equipment from big companies, and this stuff actually _is_ better tested (against a much smaller scope of compatibilities) than home stuff, and you can actually call the people who built it and say: "My Cisco ain't working with my Juniper -- WTF?" and they will help you, because each device cost $33,000 and you have a contract.
So ... have patience. From my cursory web skim, it looks like Plex+XBox is becoming more of a thing for Plex, and a few calls to their customer support might set you right. I suspect the reason the Plex can't function without you inputting 8.8.8.8 is because there's a bug in how it's requisitioning name service from your broadband provider, so it thinks there's no DNS, and for some reason, it refuses to do its thing on your local network without there being a DNS, because it wants to 'phone home' before doing its thing (maybe to check DRM, maybe to update, maybe to throw up a splash page of extra-cost offers). Something, in a word, stupid.
Like many things learning basic networking is fairly straightforward but gaining breadth and depth takes a lot of time and dedication.
One observation about how networking is actually a bit different than other IT fields is that mastery requires a lot more breadth of knowledge than many other disciplines. It’s entirely possible for a competent sysadmin to know little about networking beyond connecting servers to a patch panel and typing in the addressing information provided by someone else. In contrast the person building and operating the network needs to understand in some depth the operatio
Like many things learning basic networking is fairly straightforward but gaining breadth and depth takes a lot of time and dedication.
One observation about how networking is actually a bit different than other IT fields is that mastery requires a lot more breadth of knowledge than many other disciplines. It’s entirely possible for a competent sysadmin to know little about networking beyond connecting servers to a patch panel and typing in the addressing information provided by someone else. In contrast the person building and operating the network needs to understand in some depth the operation and configuration of the devices that will be connected.
Another point is that it’s really difficult (read: basically impossible) to progress past a fairly basic level of networking knowledge without really getting the theoretical underpinnings. If, for example, you don’t get the OSI stack and how it’s reflected in the products and protocols in use then you’re going to have a really bad time efficiently troubleshooting. Spending the time learning the theory and then focusing on exactly how the practical items you’re picking up refer back to that theory is going to leave you in a much better place.
Add me to the list of people with a fierce passion for networking. It's true, the pace of innovation in the area has declined, and we're currently stuck in another hype cycle (this year: Software-Defined Networking (SDN)), but there is no shortage of interesting work.
Put another way: would you like to work on Terabit Ethernet? A petabit router? Native mobility? These are coming.
First let me thank you for mentioning your experience level. Most people ask question without telling their experience level which make the question hard to answer and I just have to guess.
- CompTIA A+
It teaches you basic computer software and hardware - CompTIA Network+
It teaches you the network basics away from vendor specific technologies. - Cceno (ICND1)
It teaches how real Cisco network devices work and how to use and manage them - ICND2
It teaches you more about Cisco devices and technologies - CCNP Routing and Switching
It makes a Network Engineer of you
After you reach this level you will know what
First let me thank you for mentioning your experience level. Most people ask question without telling their experience level which make the question hard to answer and I just have to guess.
- CompTIA A+
It teaches you basic computer software and hardware - CompTIA Network+
It teaches you the network basics away from vendor specific technologies. - Cceno (ICND1)
It teaches how real Cisco network devices work and how to use and manage them - ICND2
It teaches you more about Cisco devices and technologies - CCNP Routing and Switching
It makes a Network Engineer of you
After you reach this level you will know what to do next :D
You make continue in the routing and switching “CCIE” or specialize in another track (Wireless, Security, ..etc). Or maybe you decide to learn another vendor technologies “Juniper, CheckPoint,…)
For high quality at low cost training I recommend AlphaPrep.net.
Wish you best of Luck :)
Please upvote if you found this helpful.
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CCNA: With what IPv6 destination prefix does a DHCPv6 Solicit address begin?
It is actually quite easy to do.
I dropped out of college; I wanted to become a musician way too much. Where I come from, music doesn't pay the bills all that much so I had to find a career that I liked, and more importantly, understood. Computer networks presented itself in a weird way.
I went for this internship kind of a thing - and the first task I took on was to create a Squid server running on Linux to serve as a proxy server. I didn't know anything about computer networks at this point, nor about Linux for that matter. I took a headfirst dive into the world of networks.
The first thing I r
It is actually quite easy to do.
I dropped out of college; I wanted to become a musician way too much. Where I come from, music doesn't pay the bills all that much so I had to find a career that I liked, and more importantly, understood. Computer networks presented itself in a weird way.
I went for this internship kind of a thing - and the first task I took on was to create a Squid server running on Linux to serve as a proxy server. I didn't know anything about computer networks at this point, nor about Linux for that matter. I took a headfirst dive into the world of networks.
The first thing I referred to was Google, ofcourse. Some very easy to understand sites came up and I read through them. Ample YouTube videos are also available if you are into learning via videos. Then I went on and did my CCNA, CCNP, currently getting ready for the CCIE, Juniper certifications and Microsoft Virtualization certifications.
My suggestion to you would be to go through the CBT Nuggets for CCNA. They will help you a TON! You will be covering the theory AND at the same time, you will also be getting a feel for how Cisco routers and switches are configured. Look for YouTube videos. You don't have to invest in hardware right away if you want to learn networks practically. You can use Cisco Packet Tracer and/or GNS3 for that. I have used both of these extensively.
Best of luck! :)
No. For me, it is and will always be the most interesting area of computing technology. Every level of networking offers something exciting to learn. Learning about layer 2 and layer 3 is the toughest, yet the most challenging and interesting. I also particularly like socket programming.
Differentiate the type of Media use in Computer Networks In your own perception what is the best networking medium?,
I am associated with the field of computer networking for years and I want to tell that it is not a boring area.
When I started learning and getting hands on, I was used to make labs on packet tracer and GNS3 and it was engaging and hours were used to pass before I had realized that so much time has passed. So its quite interesting for me.
Bringing up a network is like a solving a puzzle and it is quite interesting but stressful sometimes.
Computer Networking isn’t so much “boring” as it is “mature”, and the marketplace has pretty much settled on one of 2 standards for local-type networking (Ethernet, be it via twisted pair or via fiber optics) or WiFi (of various flavors but all backwards compatible to the original version).
LONGER distance networking on the other hand still has a lot of options - but most of those have also been around a while, with advantages and disadvantages that are well understood.
The APPLICATIONS that run via computer networks however are a field that keeps growing on that “mature” base, and even the “mat
Computer Networking isn’t so much “boring” as it is “mature”, and the marketplace has pretty much settled on one of 2 standards for local-type networking (Ethernet, be it via twisted pair or via fiber optics) or WiFi (of various flavors but all backwards compatible to the original version).
LONGER distance networking on the other hand still has a lot of options - but most of those have also been around a while, with advantages and disadvantages that are well understood.
The APPLICATIONS that run via computer networks however are a field that keeps growing on that “mature” base, and even the “mature” base gets a major upgrade every so often (like the current beginning of the move from Gigabit Ethernet to 10GB over copper)….
I read your answer OP and I share your sentiments. Main stream commercial computer network are mainly about incremental improvements and most of the interesting real world computer science problems are elsewhere precisely because computer network are good enough that other technologies that work on top of it are possible.
As a matter of fact, I worked primarily in computer networking field for about 6 years before transitioning to DevOps years ago and never looked back. It was by far one of the best career moves that I’ve made.
Yes. If you have to ask the question, then you’ll find it boring, find a different line of work. Those of us who never had to ask that question find the field quite interesting.
I don't think so. Computer networks allow so much to do. Whole world is connected with computer networks. Why it is boring, Not at all.
I can't tell you about the area but I can tell you its the most interesting subject I find in my curriculum.
A2A
No, it is not dead and boring IMO. Very few people have actual knowledge about various engineering fields let alone their specializations. When people are young they tend to fantasize about the widely known careers- just like you said rockets, cars etc. Even a rocket/spacecraft system is useless without proper communication. Electrical engineering is a field of the "unseen" that impacts our li
A2A
No, it is not dead and boring IMO. Very few people have actual knowledge about various engineering fields let alone their specializations. When people are young they tend to fantasize about the widely known careers- just like you said rockets, cars etc. Even a rocket/spacecraft system is useless without proper communication. Electrical engineering is a field of the "unseen" that impacts our lives majorly and telecommunication is a big part of that. This field has rapidly improved over the decades and new technological advancements are replacing the previously existing communication methods. But some of the conventional mode of communication protocols are still useful in ...