Introduction to computer networking.

My oldest son has been showing some interest for computers lately. So, today I decided to give him an introductory lesson to computer networking using our own home network. For starters, I explained how in the old days most people had desktop computers at home, and these weren't even connected to each other (not to talk of the Internet!). I then explained how, in order to be able to put together a network with a few nodes, you need a way to address each individual component of the network, and how several different schemes had been developed to accomplish this. In the end, though, the Internet became so popular that everyone adopted its mechanism: IP addresses and TCP/IP. At a later stage, the task was connecting those networks with each other, therefore creating the figure of the gateway. I told him about the concept of a subnet, as well as the gateway and broadcast addresses. I then proceeded to explain to him that all this could be configured via a static IP configuration or via DHCP. Finally, I taught him how to find out the IP address assigned to his own computer both on an Apple Mac and a Linux system, and also both using the graphical interface and the command line, before teaching him how to use the ping command.