Online Telecommunications Courses and
TCO Certifications Catalog

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2502 Telecom Fundamentals
$19

This is a new course being tested before incorporation in a Certification Package. Feel free to take this course at the "testing" price, and please let us know of any typos or glitches you might find.

In this course, you’ll build a solid base of knowledge in fundamental telecommunication concepts, beginning with a model for understanding circuits and information communication, client-server and peer-to-peer communication, analog vs. digital and how bits are represented by pulses, what modems do, and multiplexing: different methods of sharing circuits, and finishing with an analogy illustrating the idea behind transmitting large files in small packets.

Course Lessons
1. Communication Circuit Model
2. Terminals, Clients, Servers and Peers
3. Analog and Digital
4. Bits in Frequency Channels: Modems and Modulation
5. Frequency-Division Multiplexing
6. Time-Division Multiplexing (TDM)
7. Statistical Time Division Multiplexing
8. Packet Network: The Postal Service

Based on Teracom’s famous Course 101, tuned and refined over the course of 20 years of instructor-led training, we’ll cut through the jargon to demystify telecom fundamentals, explaining the jargon and buzzwords, the underlying ideas, and how it all works together… in plain English.

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2503 Network Fundamentals
$19

This is a new course being tested before incorporation in a Certification Package. Feel free to take this course at the "testing" price, and please let us know of any typos or glitches you might find.

In this comprehensive course, you’ll build a solid base of knowledge in networking fundamentals. We'll begin with serial and parallel point-to-point circuits, then identify the need for link addressing and access control on circuits with multiple stations, LANs and how the stations on a LAN form a broadcast domain. We'll understand the need for framing and error control to transmit data, and how this is implemented with MAC frames and MAC addresses. Then we'll define a network, and how it is implemented with WAN circuits, routers and IP network addresses as the basis of routing decisions. Then we'll understand how carrier packet networks are used to implement WAN circuits, the relationship between packets and frames, the IP address on the packet and how the MAC address changes as the packet is forwarded across a network. We'll finish with an overview of IPv4 and IPv6 packet formats, the need for a transport protocol and how TCP is used for reliability, and UDP is used for streaming, and what port numbers are and how they are used. The course is completed with an introduction to MPLS, the traffic management system used on the core of big networks.

Course Lessons
1. Point-to-Point Circuits: Serial and Parallel
2. Multidrop Circuits: Point to Multipoint
3. LANs and Broadcast Domains
4. Framing and Error Control Requirements
5. Frames & MAC Addresses
6. Networks, Routers and IP Addresses
7. Carrier Packet Network Services
8. Packets vs. Frames
9. IP Address vs. MAC Address: SFO-NYC via AT&T
10. IP Packets
11. TCP, UDP and Port Numbers
12. MPLS Labels

Based on Teracom’s famous Course 101, tuned and refined over the course of 20 years of instructor-led training, we’ll cut through the jargon to demystify network fundamentals, explaining the jargon and buzzwords, the underlying ideas, and how it all works together… in plain English.