Summary of Week 4

Week 4 concluded your introduction to smaller networks by looking at representing network addresses, tracing packets and managing Wi-Fi.

You should now be able to:

• use the binary and hexadecimal number base systems and convert between different number bases using a calculator
• express a subnet mask in Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) notation
• recognise the role of CIDR in the scalability of communication networks
• use traceroute and interpret traceroute responses
• understand the principles of multiple access and collision avoidance in Wi-Fi
• understand how enterprise-scale networking differs from home networking.

Next week you will look start your exploration of enterprise networking, which shares many of the same principles with home networking but uses more complex equipment that requires special techniques to configure and manage.

You are now half way through the course. The Open University would really appreciate your feedback and suggestions for future improvement in our optional end-of-course survey [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] , which you will also have an opportunity to complete at the end of Week 8. Participation will be completely confidential and we will not pass on your details to others.