Hello friend,

We have written this book to help anyone, even you, learn fundamental enterprise network principles through hands-on activities. The book begins by providing step-by-step instructions for creating a personal virtual environment on any modest PC or laptop running Windows. After setting up your own learning space, we will guide you through various real-world networking concepts that culminate in building your enterprise network. Once you are comfortable with creating computer networks, we will then show you how to attack your network and how to defend your network against those attacks.

The projects in this book are not advanced networking techniques. The projects are designed for anyone to learn more about computer networks. We found that many websites and helpful guides primarily addressed those who already had a strong understanding of computers and computer networks. This book is designed to demystify computer networks and place the fundamentals directly in the hands of people like you. People who have a desire to learn but are unsure they can learn this stuff. Believe me, you can.

This book does not go deep into theory. You can learn the theory from any Wikipedia page or a textbook from the library. Theory abounds around us, but what is missing is the fundamental understanding of how to apply the theory. The focus of this book is on having you do the things that other authors talk about. You won’t have to read pages of theory, analyze best practices, answer questions, or read case studies. After this introduction, you will get your hands dirty and start to make things happen. And you are going to be great at it!

I am Mathew J. Heath Van Horn. I retired after 23 years of service in the Air Force as both an enlisted member and a commissioned officer. I’m also a church leader, a husband, a father of five, a kutte-wearing Harley rider, and I gratefully serve as a professor of cybersecurity. I’m no genius; I work hard and learned cyber through my many failures. I grew up in a farming town in rural Minnesota. I didn’t want to be a farmer, so I joined the Air Force, where I learned everything I could about electronics and computers.  I then turned around and taught recent high school graduates the fundamentals of electronics repair, establishing voice and data communications, computer programming, and the theoretical principles of cyberspace. These fundamentals included building computer networks, attacking them as a hacker, and defending against such attacks.

Upon retiring as a Cyber Operations Officer, I taught underprivileged college students from New York City for five years in upstate New York.  Many of the students I encountered did not enroll in college to pursue a career. Their number one answer to my new student poll about why they were attending college was “I have nothing else to do.”  When I asked why they wanted to learn cyber technologies, the typical response was “I like to play games on my phone.”  Not precisely the highly motivated students that professors desire.  However, I firmly believe that anyone can learn these concepts, and I am committed to doing everything I can to teach them.

These students opened my eyes to the fact that there are people who believe they can’t instead of believing they can. Lecturing these students on theory did not make much progress in their success. So I flipped teaching on its head and focused on developing as many hands-on learning labs as possible. “Learn by doing” became my mantra. I taught students who initially couldn’t write a term paper or even perform basic mathematical functions a wide variety of cyber skills. Microsoft Office was our starting point, and from there, I taught students how to build and repair computers, as well as use Windows and Linux operating systems. I then developed classes to teach them programming languages, wired and wireless networking, computer hacking, and defense. Students who first stepped into my class believing they couldn’t do anything were now graduating from my classes and getting jobs, earning $65,000-$90,000 annually, and oftentimes earning more than their parents’ combined income!

I wish I could say every student was a success, but some students just held onto that defeatist attitude, and I couldn’t break them of it. However, I can say that every student who put in the required effort through hands-on learning mastered the material and found great work opportunities. I teach my students how to ‘Karate chop’ a board on the first day of class. No student has failed to break the board. However, some students experienced two failures before they succeeded, and others experienced 30 failures before they did. Learning involves a lot of trial and error before you achieve success.

True failure involves only one factor: giving up trying.

You will encounter failure when completing the labs in this book. However, you will try them again (sometimes again, again, and yet again…) and you will find what you did wrong, fix it, and get it to work. All of these labs were tested by networking novices. Our youngest tester was 12 years old and did nothing more on a computer than play Roblox. He started doing the labs because he wanted to see what everyone else was doing, so he said, “I want to try!”

I recruited college students to help build these labs. Most of these students had vague notions of networking theory, but some had no idea when they started. My fellow professors asked why I wasn’t using graduate students to help with this book. My greatest learning lesson is to choose team members with enthusiasm; I can teach them everything else. These “enthusiastic beginners” look at the material in new ways. I have been teaching, in one form or another, for nearly 40 years. This means that even though I think I am explaining something, I often skip over fundamental concepts that students lack, and the explanations fall flat. Enthusiastic beginners spot many more errors and learning problems than I do.

The student’s unique perspectives helped make these labs into what you see, and they deserve all the credit I can give them. Take note of the names of the writers and testers of each lab. These students are simply great. I hope you get to meet them someday.

Keep the following in mind as you read this book:

• This book does not focus on theory. As our younger testers pointed out, “We can Google anything we want,  just help us do stuff!”  However, we recognize that the labs in this book can be a mystery without the theory. We recommend pairing this book with any Introduction to Networking website or textbook that suits your learning style.
• We used many testers, and the labs worked great. We used various desktops and laptops in our tests. However, GNS3 can be tricky depending on the hardware in the machine. If you are encountering problems, it could be a hardware problem, but that should be your last thought. When we first started building these labs, we frequently formatted our hard drives, but now it is a rare occurrence. Now, significant problems often arise when we try something new and push the limits of GNS3, rather than being due to lab complexity.
• We found that people with the least experience should start with a fresh install of Windows. This approach yielded the best results in terms of completing the labs.
• We do not use punctuation at the end of the lab steps. This is because punctuation could cause confusion among new learners. In these labs, we focus on typing commands using the command-line interface (CLI). However, CLI commands rely on spaces, periods, and other symbols used by sentences. By removing the ending punctuation, clarity emerged, and learners were more successful.
• RTFQ is an often-used acronym that means “Read The ‘Full’ Question.”  It indicates that you probably missed something because you didn’t read slowly and carefully. My kids have heard this so often that they apply it in their own lives. On my daughter’s first day of high school, the teacher gave the class a pretest similar to this one, and my daughter was the only one who got it right. All because of RTFQ.
• Occasionally, you will see notes in the labs. These were inserted because some lab testers experienced problems, while others didn’t, or because a snippet of theory helped explain the “why” behind the lab at that time.
• New learners found that 7-Zip worked the best in unzipping the files. Windows Zip worked sometimes, so we suggest downloading and installing 7-Zip to work on these labs.
• Other teachers wanted homework and grading recommendations for the labs. We made these inclusions, but people need to keep in mind that cyber is a 1 or 0 profession. I grade my students’ work based on a binary grading scale. The student either got the lab to work or not. There is no such thing as being “almost”, “mostly”, or “kind of” pregnant. Networks are the same way, there is no such thing as “Computer A can nearly communicate with Computer B”. They either communicate or not.  Therefore, the deliverables and homework are written with this all-or-nothing idea. Homework and grading examples are included at the back of the book.
• Speaking of which, we generally do not repeat material. Since this is an e-book, learners can have more than one lab open at a time to refer back to other labs as often as needed.
• We want learners to learn a wide variety of skills. Therefore, we deliberately used different techniques to satisfy common tasks. This way, learners gain topical networking experience and various tools and techniques in virtual and physical machines.
• This book is intended to be a living document. We are confident that both learners and teachers will provide us with feedback on areas we may have overlooked or general suggestions for material they believe should be included. Additionally, cyber threats change rapidly, and these labs will not remain static as written; they simply cannot.

In conclusion, we used professional and novice learners in building learning labs to reach the widest learner audience possible. We want people to enjoy learning networking principles by doing rather than reading. We hope you enjoy this textbook, and we are confident that you can succeed!

Sincerely,

Mathew J. Heath Van Horn, PhD and the students at ERAU-Prescott