Data Communications: The Big Picture

This course is designed to build a working, conversational fluency in data communications: how data physically and logically moves from one point to another, how enterprises, network service providers, and cloud providers each build and operate networks differently, and how business applications ultimately rely on all of it. It assumes no prior networking background but goes deeper than a typical high-level briefing, covering the fundamentals of encapsulation, enterprise network design, service provider architectures (including MPLS and 5G), cloud deployment/consumption models, and the application-layer protocols and QoS mechanisms that shape user experience.

Data communications has fundamentally changed human civilization. The internet is available almost everywhere throughout the developed world, and entire businesses — carriers such as Sprint, Verizon, and British Telecom — exist purely to connect machines together. For these companies, *the network is the product*.

By contrast, the vast majority of companies sell some other product or service entirely unrelated to networking — everything from motorcycles to manicures. For them, the network is simply a transportation mechanism...