There are certainly classes that cover networking.

IP, TCP, DNS, and HTTP were covered in classes I took.

As for actually on the wire. I haven't studied anything about how ethernet actually works. I assume its kindof like i2c, but I don't know more than that and haven't needed to.

So if college was so invaluable teaching networking, how do you think people who went to school before http existed learned? Just like everything else, you can learn as needed.

> So if college was so invaluable teaching networking,

I never said or implied that college was invaluable for teaching networking. I just answered a question about what was taught.

Mine here in the UK covered quite a lot if networking protocols, so yes, there are some out there. In fact, it's never occured to me that this wouldn't be covered. I'd be pretty disappointed if a new grad couldn't figure out how to how to at least approach diagnosing an issue :(

My CS degree had it as an elective. It was the class I did the worst in, and I now work primarily with network protocol implementations. Good foundation though, even though the prof was terrible at designing assignments.

My undergrad had a good computer architecture class, but it didn't cover networking. That's definitely a pretty big hole in my knowledge. A networking class would absolutely have slotted in quite easily to the CS curriculum.

This would have been a great class to replace the "How to Double-click a Mouse 101" class that my college required all students to take.