Re: ISP customer assignments

[Owen DeLong <owen () delong com>]

I've taught both.  If you try to teach it in Decimal, Hex, or Octal,  
you're right, it's hard
to teach CIDR and easy to teach classful.

If you teach it in binary, I have found that not to be an issue.  Once  
you teach it in binary,
it's fairly easy to move on to showing how octal and hex are just  
different representations
of binary. Then you show dotted decimal as a really old-fashioned way  
of representing
groups of 8 bits.

I've had no trouble teaching it this way, even to people who knew  
nothing about technology.

Owen

On Oct 16, 2009, at 1:51 PM, Daniel Golding wrote:

> The big problem here is that CIDR is tough to teach, even to  
> engineering students. This seems bizarre and counterintuitive, but  
> its true. I know this because I've done it. Its really easy to teach  
> classful addressing, on the other hand. Other problems include the  
> issue that many of the folks teaching have never had to use CIDR in  
> real life, textbook age, and, in some cases, lack of mathematical  
> preparation and inclination on the part of students.
>
> Scarier: I was teaching graduate students.
>
> - Dan
>
> On Oct 13, 2009, at 7:53 AM, Joe Abley wrote:
>
> > On 2009-10-13, at 07:39, Scott Morris wrote:
> >
> > > No idea, I haven't looked at that stuff in a while.   But I would  
> > > assume
> > > so, as it's easier to build a foundation than jumping straight to
> > > something difficult?
> >
> > I've found RIP to be a reasonable way to teach the concept of a  
> > routing protocol, since the protocol is very simple and you can  
> > always close with "don't ever use this".
> >
> > But teaching classful routing and addressing is just moronic. It's  
> > a foundation that nothing is built on any more, and makes no sense  
> > to teach outside of a history class.
> >
> > > Or did you learn calculus in grade school?  Just askin'   ;)
> >
> > Yes, since you asked, but your presumption is faulty.
> >
> >
> > Joe