hello

[Doctorexit3]

Hey everybody iv been a fan of the show since 2nd season but iv never really reached out on the forums or anything just kind of used to creep around here and i figured it was about time i actually introduced myself and computers have always fascinated me every since i was about 3 or 4 so my family always said it was easy tho i guess my ma teaches at the local college around me she teaches mostly on multimedia like the adobe suite and what not but the one thing thats always intrigued me was networking growing up it was like something inside me just needed to know how it all worked and flowed together and i feel i have a fairly decent understanding on if it all but my problem is i have a very front end view of it all so to say lately iv been very intrested in whats going on behind it all i want to know what makes it all tick so iv decided to start learn a language and im having a hard time deciding where to start does anybody have any input to point me into the right direction? im very eager to learn any help would be very much appreciated i know none of you know me but iv been around here long enough to know what a wonderful community hak5 has built id just like to thank them for everything theyv done for all of us

thanks guys = )

[digip]

Start with the basics, packets, network masks, ip class ranges, subnetting, OSI model, and just interconnectivity in general. Play with Wireshark, learn about layers 2 and 3 mainly for now, why mac addressing is only layer 2 and why IP is at layer 3, so you get an idea of how that works. Any books on CompTia network+ will help get you started, then work up to some cisco stuff that gets more in depth.

Then I'd say work into some scripting languages that allow you to conrol network adapters, and routes, tunneling, etc. From there, you should have a good grasp of tricks, for example on a local lan, machines may not respond to a ping, but in order to u'llwork, they have to throw an arp when pinged. So to see if a machine is up for example and a ping returns no reply, do an arp -a and check for the corresponding IP you pinged and if it shows its mac address. THis confirms the machine is up.

Then i'd say check out nmap and map a network in combination with wireshark or tcpdump to get a topology, learn how to bypass subnet and vlan masks, etc. You'll have more than enough with just those topics to get you started with networking.

As for languages, and what you'd like to do, depends on what the end result is you want to have happen. FOr me, i write little bash scripts for each network I have access to for my wireless to clear dhcp leases, start nics and wpa_supplicant my way onto the networks, use it for RDP scripting and open vpn tunnels, etc. There is so much to cover and so many directions you can take it in, you'll see that its way more involved than simple black and white question and answers.

Oh, and brush up on your hex and binary math. Will come in handy for learning ICMP packet data, but also where different subnets, broadcasts, etc exist on a network and finding multiple gateways on one class of addresses and why a netmask is important.

[Trip]

welcome and enjoy your stay.