this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2025
97 points (97.1% liked)

Selfhosted

53744 readers
375 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

  7. No low-effort posts. This is subjective and will largely be determined by the community member reports.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I tried to study a bit from beej.us and I appreciated the style of teaching, but ultimately thought it wasn't for me as it didn't go much into depth and focused more on creating C programs. Is there some source from where I can learn in a comprehensive yet easy to understand manner the fundamentals of computer networking, at least to the extent that is relevant for selfhosting?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] dbtng@eviltoast.org 1 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

Well ... How much do you want to learn? How serious are you?

If you want to know networking, the authority is Cisco.
I'm scheduled to take my CCST Network exam tomorrow. That's an entry-level Cisco cert.
I've been studying for about 3 months. Wish me luck ...

Junior NetAdmin Cert
The CCST training is online and entirely free.
https://www.netacad.com/career-paths/network-technician?courseLang=en-US

Access
You've got to jump through some hoops. You need to create an account and go through some verification.
They need to figure out if you are 'overseas' and whether you should be able to download encryption products.
I think its probably easiest if you use your work email, that's what they are really looking for.

Cisco U
There's a shit-ton of free classes at Cisco U as well.
Most of those are not directly cert-related, but a large amount of them were created for people studying for the CCNA, so they are certainly helpful. There's all sorts of rando training, keep ya real busy. Here's one I've started.
https://u.cisco.com/paths/understanding-cisco-data-center-foundations-20705

Lab Environments
The whole study program uses Packet Tracer for the labs, which you download from them.
I also got a copy of Cisco Modeling Labs running. That was a bitch, had to shoe-horn an OVA to run on Proxmox.
And I got an older edu copy of the Cloud Services virtual router, if there's anything these other lab environments can't handle. (This version can be freely downloaded ... csr1000v-universal9.03.12.00.S.154-2.S-std.iso)