Network+ story and palace like @thinkaboutthebible

To whom it may concern,

I am studying for CompTia certifications. I watch videos, read books, and currently im using mnemonics that I learned from reading the 3 volume set of douglas Hoff’s books. My question is what would be a relevant associatable memory palace and story that can contain the information. Examples of the type of information is ip addressing, osi model, subnetting, protocols, ports, standards, troubleshooting etc…

Im just wondering if it is possible to use douglas hoff’s methods on a book on networking.

Thank you,

JM

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Let’s ask the man himself! Doug is a regular contributor here and is a super nice and engaging guy. I’m sure he’d be happy to give you some thoughts. Paging @thinkaboutthebible, come in Doug!

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@Jmatlack, it’s great to see you here on the forum, Joshua. I am so appreciative of your excellent reviews.

I’ve addressed the subject of the OSI model somewhat in my book under Skill: Convert word sequences.

Computer – OSI Layers

The OSI layers, staple of computer networking education, in reverse order from seven to one are Application, Presentation, Session, Transport, Network, Data link and Physical.

  • All People Seem To Need Data Processing

and I added another:

or forwards:

Please Do Not Throw Sausage Pizza Away

Now if you want to add relevant information, you will need more detail in the layers and head towards using a peg list or a story. The word sequences don’t provide much visual detail for a peg list so you would use another more familiar one. My favorite are body locations as you’ll see in my exercises (see 1.4 Pegs 1 for the introduction to terrain pegs). Here’s the layout and a quick example with a little help from an older post from @scoobywan. The body parts start with a Major system peg (1 = T = top) for each layer number.

Location OSI layer Association
top of head Physical A bodybuilder lifts a barbell to the top of his head.
nose Data link The albino eyes on top of the nose of Data from Star Trek.
mouth Network Network cables hanging out of your mouth.
heart or ribs Transport Your heart acting like an elevator with people entering and exiting as it opens and closes.
loins Session A therapy client standing up akimbo (hands on sides next to loins) and getting angry at his therapist in a tense session.
ouch”, (rear end) Presentation A teacher falling backwards on his flip chart.
calf Application A person applies soothing salve into his calves for cramping.

Now with a little more creativity, you can add narrative logic to reinforce the pegs and end up with a story. For instance, the the bodybuilder becomes Data and then Data wants to help get stranded people off of a hostile planet so he hooks up his mouth cables to the ship’s computer and uses his heart to be a transporter room. This causes severe trauma which requires a psychotherapist session and the therapist tries to logically explain the problem on his flip chart but falls on it instead causing his calves to cramp.

The other types of information may require a little design work but IP numbers are associated groups of three-digit number keywords, and processes would be stories for sure.

If you have a particular problem, I’ll be glad to help and others will have suggestions here also I’m sure. Another great idea is to do a search on the topic. For instance, looking for subnetting would give this result list.

Again, thanks for the great reviews. And thanks for the ping, @TheHumanTim.
Doug

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