This Linux Networking course focuses on the aspects of the various networking services that the platform offers. This course allows the student to gain a good general understanding of the networking services in order to successfully implement them in a working environment. It also gives the student a strong practical experience of the steps involved in the configuration of those network services by focusing on real world exercises during the hands-on sessions.

Students are expected to have a good basic knowledge of Linux or a UNIX variant. The students must have successfully passed a Linux Administration course (or have the equivalent).

1. Introduction to Linux Networking

A brief history
TCP/IP networks
Linux networking
Maintaining your system

2. Issues of TCP/IP Networking

Networking interfaces
IP addresses
Address resolution
IP routing
The Internet control message protocol (ICMP)
Resolving host names

3. Configuring the Networking Hardware

Kernel configuration
A tour of Linux network devices
Ethernet installation
The PLIP driver (overview)
The PPP and SLIP drivers (overview)
Other network types (overview)

4. Configuring TCP/IP Networking

Mounting the /proc file system
Installing the binairies
Setting the hostname
Assigning IP addresses
Creating subnets
Writing hosts and networks files
Interface configuration for IP
All about ifconfig
The netstat command
Checking the ARP tables

5. Name Service and Resolver Configuration (DNS)

The resolver library
How DNS works
Running named

6. TCP/IP Firewall

Methods of attack
What is a firewall?
What is IP filtering?
Setting up Linux for firewalling
Three ways we can do filtering
IP firewall chains (2.2 Kernels)
Netfilter and IP tables (2.4 Kernels)
TOS bit manipulation
Testing a firewall configuration

7. IP Masquerade and Network Address Translation (NAT)

Side effects and fringe benefits
Configuring the kernel for IP masquerade
Configuring IP masquerade
Handling name server lookups
More about network address translation (NAT)

8. Important Network Features

The inetd super server
The tcpd access control facility
The services and protocols files
Remote procedure call (RPC)
Configuring remote login and execution

9. The Network Information System (NIS)

Getting acquainted with NIS
NIS versus NIS+
The client side of NIS
Running an NIS server
NIS server security
Setting up an NIS client
Choosing the right maps
Using the passwd and group maps
Using NIS with shadow support

10. The Network File System (NFS)

Preparing NFS
Mounting an NFS volume
The NFS daemons
The exports file
Kernel-based NFSv2 server support
Kernel-based NFSv3 server support

11. Electronic Mail

What is a mail message? (Overview)
How is mail delivered?
Email addresses
How does mail routing work?
Configuring PINE

12. Sendmail

Introduction to sendmail
Installing sendmail
Overview of configuration files
The sendmail.cf and sendmail.mc files
Generating the sendmail.cf file
Configuring sendmail options
Running sendmail
Tips and tricks

13. Samba

History of Samba.
Role of Samba in an networking environment.
Samba utilities.
Setting up and managing Samba shares.
Setting up and managing Printer shares

Hands-on

Day 1: Basic networking configurations
Day 2: inetd, FTP, WWW and other services
Day 3: named, firewall & IP masquerading
Day 4: NIS & NFS
Day 5: Sendmail, POP3 and IMAP