Ultimate IT Fundamentals Bootcamp For Absolute Beginners

Explore computing devices' core hardware components—cpu, ram, storage drives (hdd and ssd), network interface cards, monitors, and graphics processors—and how software and hardware interact to run applications.

Understand software and operating systems as the bridge between hardware and applications. Learn GUI and CLI interfaces with Windows, Mac OS, iOS, Android, and Linux, including open source concepts.

Explore how applications run on top of system software to perform tasks. See desktop, mobile, web, and cloud applications with examples like Gmail, Chrome, and Google Maps.

Defines physical servers or bare metal, outlines hardware specs (CPUs, memory, storage, GPUs, network), operating systems (Linux, Windows), and how virtualization addressed scaling and cost in web applications.

Create a free AWS account to access cloud labs, verify email and phone, set up a strong root password, and understand free vs paid plans, credits, and six-month limits.

Explore the AWS Management Console, learn to navigate regions, and launch a first virtual machine with EC2 and VPC settings, including pricing and termination steps.

Explore data centers, cloud computing, and cloud service models, contrasting on-premises infrastructure with pay-as-you-go cloud options from AWS, Azure, and GCP.

Explore cloud service models—IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS—compare customer and provider responsibilities from on premises to cloud, with examples like AWS, Netflix, and Uber.

Explore the three major traffic flow types—unicast, multicast, and broadcast—and how they route data from one device to a specific target, a group, or all devices on a network.

Explore network cabling basics, including copper twisted-pair Ethernet (Cat5/5e/6/6a) with RJ-45 connectors, and fiber optics for long-distance, high-speed WAN links.

Explore data center networks by linking servers, storage, and switches with high-speed fiber uplinks, ensuring redundancy, high availability, and efficient interconnection with WAN and internet.

Campus area network (CAN) links multiple buildings on a single campus, enabling LANs and wireless LAN across sites via fiber optic uplinks to connect data centers and the internet.

Learn the fundamentals of IP addressing and subnetting, including IPv4 vs IPv6, subnet masks, hosts and networks, public and private IPs, and how routers route IP packets.

Explore the format of IP addresses, including IPv4 and IPv6, how to identify device IP addresses with ipconfig or ip commands, and understand subnet masks and public or private ranges.

Learn how decimal and binary numbering systems underpin computing devices, IP address handling, and local versus external networks.

Learn how IPv4 addresses use 32 bits in four decimal octets (0–255 per field), distinguish networks from hosts, and apply subnet masks to identify the network and host portions.

Discover how IPv4 subnet masks separate network and host parts using decimal and CIDR notation, with examples like 192.168.1.0/24 and 255.255.255.0.

Practice subnet mask concepts using CIDR notation to determine the network ID, host, and decimal subnet mask from IPv4 addresses, and understand binary representations and subnetting.

Given an IP address and a /16 CIDR, convert to binary, split network and host parts, zero host bits to form the network ID, and state the subnet mask 255.255.0.0.

Convert decimal IP addresses to binary and compute the network ID, host, and subnet mask for a /20 network. Practice mind math and decimal-to-binary conversion to cement subnetting concepts.

Learn the easy subnetting method by dividing a single IP block into multiple subnets, using online calculators to determine network IDs, broadcast addresses, and usable hosts.

Explain how to break down an IP address range with a subnet mask, identify network and broadcast addresses, and determine usable IPs and counts using /24 and /30 examples.

Practice breaking down an internet protocol address into network and host parts using a subnet mask, identifying the network id, host bits, broadcast ip, and usable addresses.

Subnet a /24 into four equal /26 subnets, each with 64 addresses and 62 usable hosts, using 255.255.255.192.

Learn how to subnet a /16 range to meet the ten subnet requirement by borrowing four bits, forming a /20 mask, yielding 16 subnets with 4094 usable addresses per subnet.

convert a 192.168.4.0/24 range into five subnets by borrowing three bits to create /27 networks, giving 32 addresses per subnet with 30 usable hosts, starting at 0-31.

Evaluate subnetting a 192.168.1.0/24 to four subnets using /26 or eight subnets using /27, compare usable hosts (62 vs 30) and growth considerations, and recommend a future-ready design.

Explore practical subnets for hands-on cloud labs, using AWS‑approved IP ranges from /16 to /28 and example addresses, enabling quick, permission-free testing in the cloud.

Learn the difference between public and private IP addresses and how routers translate private to public addresses. Understand the IP address hierarchy from IANA to registries and ISPs.

Demonstrates locating a private IP address on a Windows PC by launching the command prompt and running ipconfig, using an AWS-based client to compare public and private addresses.

Design a home lan ip scheme using 192.168.10.0/26 and subnetting, assigning four devices via one switch and configuring vlan. Use 1 to 62 as usable addresses, lan isolated from internet.

Design a small enterprise ip scheme with 172.31.0.0/16, allocating 172.31.1.0/24 for the lan and 172.31.3.0/24 for the data center, plus a /30 uplink to the internet.

Design and implement an IP scheme for a remote LAN and data center connection using routers and a WAN link, configure slash 30 subnets and default gateways for proper routing.

Demonstrate manual ip routing on two routers, building routing tables for the lan, wan, data center, and internet with static and default routes.

Explore how an IP packet acts like a sealed envelope, carrying the payload and headers with source and destination IP addresses to deliver messages across public networks.

Create subnets within a VPC in a region, each bound to a single availability zone with a CIDR block, and use route tables guided by the AWS‑managed implied router.

Attach an internet gateway to your VPC to enable subnet internet access. Note, this fully managed AWS service cannot be logged into, and routing tables must direct traffic to it.

Learn to design a custom AWS VPC with subnets across availability zones, configure route tables and an internet gateway, and compare it with the default VPC in the console.

Demonstrate configuring public and private subnets in an AWS VPC by routing to the internet gateway, provisioning an EC2 with a public IP, and testing connectivity and NAT behavior.

Demonstrates how a wireless router NATs a private IP behind a public IP, using Windows command prompt and curl ifconfig.me to reveal private and public addresses in an AWS demo.

Discover why IP packets need headers beyond source and destination IP addresses, including ports, and how OSI standards enable interoperable networking and TCP/UDP across vendors.

Explore the OSI model's layer seven, four, and three, showing how the application layer serves apps, the transport layer manages end-to-end delivery with ports, and the network layer routes.

Understand how TCP/IP protocols enable interoperable communication, including HTTP/HTTPS, DNS, SMTP, FTP, NFS, SSH, TLS/SSL, and the difference between TCP’s reliability and UDP’s speed.

Explain ICMP, the internet control message protocol, and how ping uses echo requests and replies to test server availability, while noting layer three troubleshooting and security implications of ping blocking.

Learn to securely SSH into an AWS Linux EC2 instance from a Mac or Linux client using a private key in a key pair for authentication.

Learn to SSH from a Windows client into a Linux EC2 instance on AWS using a key pair and PEM file, then verify connectivity and terminate the instance.

Analyze the tcp/ip packet anatomy by tracing source and destination ports, protocol numbers, and dynamic ephemeral ports used to reach well-known ports like http on 80 and https on 443.

Explore how cyber security protects computers, networks, and data, and distinguish it from network security, with firewalls, aws security groups, network ACLs, encryption, and vpn concepts.

Discover how AWS VPC security groups act as layer four virtual firewalls at the instance network interface to filter inbound and outbound traffic; they are stateful by design.

Perform a hands-on AWS lab to test security groups by creating two groups (SGA and SGB), launching two EC2 instances, and validating SSH connectivity.

Conduct an ICMP ping test between two AWS EC2 instances to understand how security group inbound and outbound rules govern private IP reachability.

Demonstrate outbound rule impact in security groups by removing the all-traffic outbound rule in security group a and testing ICMP ping to B's private IP, highlighting stateful responses.

Test security group rules by making an http request to a public ip, verify icmp and ssh reachability, and diagnose why port 80 has no http service.

Explore how AWS network access control lists function as subnet-level, layer four firewalls, applying inbound and outbound rules with numbered entries to control traffic for all instances in a subnet.

Discover how AWS network ACLs operate within VPCs, including default vs custom ACL behavior, inbound and outbound rules, and how to add or edit deny and allow rules.

Practice scenarios show how to determine if traffic is allowed by network ACLs and security groups, considering stateless inbound and outbound rules and explicit denies.

Explore practical network ACL scenarios, analyzing inbound and outbound rules, port access (3306, 22, 80/443), and how to troubleshoot access between subnets and the internet.

Demonstrate that network ACLs are stateless, with inbound and outbound rules and priority, using two security groups and EC2 instances to show ICMP and SSH behavior in a custom VPC.

Learn how encryption scrambles data to protect it from middle attackers in transit or at rest, using symmetric or asymmetric keys. Explore how HTTPS keeps sensitive information private.

Explore how virtual private networks secure traffic through encrypted connections using IPsec, enabling site-to-site and remote access use cases from public wifi to corporate networks.

Discover how the Domain Name System translates domain names into IP addresses, how DNS queries route requests, and how devices configure and look up DNS information.

Monitor real-time system health with metrics like CPU utilization, memory, and network; alert on thresholds; and log events with AWS CloudWatch and CloudTrail for auditing and troubleshooting.

Practice a troubleshooting use case for a slow ecommerce site, using monitoring, alerts, and logs to pinpoint bottlenecks like CPU or disk IO and find the root cause quickly.

Explore how databases store, search, update, and retrieve data for applications, distinguishing relational and NoSQL systems, using SQL queries and backups to ensure persistence.

Learn to draw a professional amazon web services vpc diagram with two availability zones, public and private subnets, cidr blocks, route tables, and internet connectivity.