Tier 1 · Gated foundation
Networking Foundations
Working networking competence — the layered stack, IP and subnetting, TCP/UDP, DNS, TLS, and hands-on packet analysis.
- Duration
- 9 weeks
- Tier
- Tier 1 · Foundations
- Certificate
- WIATech Certificate in Networking Foundations
A nine-week, lab-centred intensive that turns networking from a black box into something diagnosable. Students learn the substrate every engineer relies on — the layered protocol model, IP addressing and subnetting, the transport protocols, DNS and HTTP, TLS at substantive depth, and the diagnostic toolkit reached for when something on the wire goes wrong. By the end a graduate can read a network diagram, subnet a small network, capture and analyse real packet traffic in Wireshark, troubleshoot connectivity, and reason about TLS.
§ What you'll be able to do
- Read a network diagram fluently and explain what is happening at each layer
- Subnet under time pressure and design CIDR allocations from requirements
- Capture and analyse packet traffic in Wireshark with systematic investigation
- Diagnose connectivity problems using the full command-line toolkit
- Explain the TCP/IP and OSI models substantively, including where practice deviates
- Reason about TLS — handshake, certificate validation, failure modes, visible versus encrypted
- Configure a small network in Packet Tracer — switching, routing, firewall rules, addressing
- Investigate DNS resolution and defend their reasoning to a senior engineer
§ What you'll cover
The Network Stack and the Layered Model
The conceptual foundation — the OSI and TCP/IP reference models, what each layer does, why layering matters, encapsulation, and the journey of a packet.
Physical and Data Link Layers
The bottom of the stack — physical media, bandwidth/latency/jitter, the submarine cables behind Freetown's latency, Ethernet, MAC addresses, switching and ARP.
The Internet Protocol — Addressing and Routing
Layer 3 — what IP does, IPv4 and IPv6, public versus private addresses and NAT, the IP header, TTL and traceroute, and routing at conceptual level.
Subnetting and CIDR
A full week on the skill most worth teaching properly — subnet masks and slash notation, subnet design from requirements, VLSM, and the common traps.
Transport Layer — TCP and UDP
Layer 4 — ports and sockets, the TCP handshake, sequence numbers and acknowledgements, flow and congestion control, UDP, and reading both in Wireshark.
DNS, DHCP, and the Application Layer
The application-layer protocols — DNS hierarchy and record types, the DHCP handshake, HTTP/HTTPS and its versions, and email protocols.
Network Security Fundamentals
The security floor — the threat model, TLS at substantive depth including the handshake and the chain of trust, failure modes, and firewalls and VPNs at literacy level.
Packet Analysis and Network Diagnostics
The integration module — using Wireshark like a working engineer, the full command-line toolkit, reading captures from real failure modes, and systematic investigation.
Capstone
The Designed Network
Choosing one of three realistic Sierra Leone scenarios, the student delivers a network diagram, a working Packet Tracer configuration, a design document, a meaningful Git history, and an oral defence.
§ Tools you'll use
- Wireshark
- Cisco Packet Tracer
- The CLI diagnostic toolkit (ping, traceroute, mtr, dig, curl, ss, tcpdump, nmap)
- Browser developer tools and openssl s_client
- Git
- Pencil and paper for diagrams and subnetting
§ Where it leads
A gated foundation that two diplomas rest directly on — SEC 200's network-security work opens on the Wireshark fluency and protocol literacy it establishes, and CLD 200 treats VPCs, route tables, security groups and load balancers as cloud abstractions of the networking it teaches.