Experiment what the fuck do I need to be good at IT networking?

[svgmn1]

I asked myself then thought, then I devised a plan to practice setting up a basic server with NAS storage to practice setting up servers, I'm too fucking lowiq and never done this shit before so I will use this as a first hand experience type practice.

1-my old dell sandybride laptop, in which I'll strip of any dignity and run debian netinst on it, but it won't be headless since I'll add a de like xfce or lxqt (some lightweight, barely functional shit) and a couple of things


2-a switch, of course.
there are some cheap shit tplink switches with 3 100mb ports, can be bought for cheaps bro! so far that's the only thing I'm missing for this experiment afaik

3-a couple of ethernet cables which I already have laying around

4-a workgroup member/client (my current laptop running fuckdora 42)

5-a goddamn router hooked in the switch for dhcp (?) Idk but I think it would be better than assigning fixed addresses? but that would probably make it harder than setting up without a router for me in terms of accessing clients since their ips will be randomized maybe I need to practice both methods afterall

6- spare hdds for the nas storage, I only got one will manage to get a second one to format them in raid and setup a very basic nas.

I plan to do this shit after 3 months, I still haven't even finished my c++ course. gadayum

 

[SrutalBeggs]

You should probably practice using simulators first before going on to real hardware. I started with (((Cisco)))'s Packet Tracer first

 

[svgmn1]

You should probably practice using simulators first before going on to real hardware. I started with (((Cisco)))'s Packet Tracer first

but the only real hardware used would be the client (my current laptop) ? afaik it won't be affected since it will be just a client.
the server host will be a dusty old laptop that I'm not using anymore, the hard drives too.