NEAT Program
The NEAT Program was developed while interning at Richweb located in Ashland, Virginia. The program is designed to be a semester long curriculum to help high schools and colleges teach the basics of network engineering. This field is one that is often overlooked in the Computer Science world and is a necessary requirement for keeping the world interconnected. The program comes with a physical server rack with devices commonly found in the field and a comprehensive curriculum to teach students how to use this equipment.
Link to the Curriculum
NEAT Racks
The NEAT Program comes delivered with NEAT racks. These racks contain hardware commonly found in real server rooms. The servers include two Linux servers (such as Dell Poweredges), a Cisco switch, a Power over Ethernet Dell/Juniper switch, a Cisco router, a monitor, keyboard, and VOIP Phone. The racks also came cabled with power and ethernet cables and were delivered to 7 high schools across Virginia.
NEAT Curriculum
The NEAT program also included a semester-long curriculum to teach the basic skills required to network engineer and use the NEAT Racks. The curriculum is broken into 5 units with each including a lesson and a lab. The labs ranged in difficulty and covered topics such as setting up DHCP, basics of switching, static and dynamic routing, firewall configuration and management, and using VOIP devices.
