🌐 30-Day Networking Study Plan

Here is the perfect 30-Day Networking Study Plan, fully structured, beginner → intermediate → advanced. Follow this, and in 1 month you will understand networking fundamentals, cloud networking, security, and troubleshooting.

Time required per day: 1 to 1.5 hours Outcome: Solid networking foundation + job-ready skills + cloud basics

🟩 WEEK 1 — Networking Fundamentals (Days 1–7)

📌 Day 1 — What is Networking?

• What is a network?

• LAN, WAN, MAN

• Client-server model

• IP, MAC, Ports

• Tools: ping, tracert

📌 Day 2 — OSI Model (Layer by Layer)

• All 7 layers

• Real examples

• Mnemonics

• Where each protocol fits

📌 Day 3 — TCP/IP Model

• 4 layers

• Difference vs OSI

• Which is used in real systems (TCP/IP)

📌 Day 4 — IP Addressing Basics

• IPv4

• Private vs public IP

• Subnet mask

• Gateway

• Hands-on practice: ipconfig

📌 Day 5 — Subnetting (Beginner Level)

• Why subnetting

• /24, /16, /8

• Practice small networks

📌 Day 6 — DNS & DHCP

• How DNS works

• What is DHCP

• DNS lookup (nslookup)

• Hostname vs IP mapping

📌 Day 7 — Transport Layer: TCP & UDP

• TCP 3-way handshake

• UDP characteristics

• Use cases (WhatsApp vs HTTP)

🟦 WEEK 2 — Devices, Routing, Switching (Days 8–14)

📌 Day 8 — Switches & MAC Addressing

• MAC table

• ARP

• Broadcast vs unicast

📌 Day 9 — VLANs

• What is VLAN

• Why needed

• Trunking

• Inter-VLAN routing

📌 Day 10 — Routers & Routing Tables

• How a router works

• Routing table structure

• Static vs dynamic routing

📌 Day 11 — OSPF (Dynamic Routing Basics)

• What OSPF does

• Areas

• Link state

📌 Day 12 — BGP (Internet Routing)

• AS numbers

• How internet routing works

• Why BGP is powerful

📌 Day 13 — NAT & PAT

• Private → public translation

• Port address translation

• Home router example

• Firewall NAT

📌 Day 14 — Firewalls & ACLs

• Stateful firewall

• Packet filtering

• Access-control lists

• Allow/deny rules

🟧 WEEK 3 — Advanced Networking + Cloud (Days 15–21)

📌 Day 15 — Load Balancing

• L4 vs L7 load balancers

• Reverse proxy

• HAProxy / Nginx basics

📌 Day 16 — VPNs & Tunnels

• IPSec

• OpenVPN

• SSL-VPN

• When tunnels are needed

📌 Day 17 — Proxies (Forward & Reverse)

• Proxy

• Reverse proxy

• CDN

• Cache servers

📌 Day 18 — Network Security 101

• TLS/SSL

• Certificates

• Zero Trust

• IDS/IPS

📌 Day 19 — Cloud Networking: AWS VPC

• VPC

• Subnets

• IGW

• NAT Gateway

• Route tables

• Security groups

📌 Day 20 — Azure/GCP Networking Equivalents

• VNet

• Peering

• Load balancers

• Cloud DNS

📌 Day 21 — CDN & Global Networking

• Cloudflare

• Akamai

• How global routing works

• Edge servers

🟪 WEEK 4 — DevOps Networking + Practical Skills (Days 22–30)

📌 Day 22 — Docker Networking

• Bridge network

• Host mode

• Port mapping

• Docker compose networking

📌 Day 23 — Kubernetes Networking

• Pod to Pod

• Service (ClusterIP, NodePort, LoadBalancer)

• Ingress

• CNI plugins (Calico, Flannel)

📌 Day 24 — API Networking Basics

• REST

• RPC

• WebSockets

• Messaging queues

• Rate limiting

📌 Day 25 — Performance Concepts

• Latency

• Bandwidth

• Throughput

• QoS

• Packet loss

📌 Day 26 — Observability Tools

• Grafana

• Prometheus

• Logs

• Distributed tracing basics

📌 Day 27 — Network Troubleshooting

Hands-on tools:

• ping

• traceroute

• telnet

• netstat

• curl

• mtr

Fix common issues:

• DNS not resolving

• No gateway

• Port blocked

• NAT misconfig

📌 Day 28 — Security Hardening

• Firewall rules

• DDoS basics

• Bruteforce prevention

• HTTPS-only

📌 Day 29 — Architecture Review

Learn real-world architectures:

• WhatsApp

• Netflix

• Cloudflare

• Amazon

• Uber

Understand networking in distributed systems.

📌 Day 30 — Final Review + Mini Project

Build a mini networking project:

Option A — Create your own cloud VPC

• Create subnets

• Add NAT

• Add EC2

• Add load balancer

Option B — Build a Docker + Nginx reverse proxy

Option C — Build a simple RPC + REST server