In 1994, TCP/IP was considered dead by many Unix was considered obsolete. The World Wide Web didn't exist as we know it today. Today TCP/IP is the king of network transport protocols! In a matter of months, the computing world completely reversed its direction. Because of the rapid rate of change in the computing industry, the only way to stay current is to read trade publications.
Educational institutes are not able to keep up with the pace of the computing industry. The fast track education cycle takes 6 months to a year to propose, develop and finally teach a new course! In that time, there could be major changes or revisions of the product being used in the course. An excellent example of change is the Linux kernel revisions over the past year.
Anything you read that is over two years old is pretty much obsolete. For example: anything you read about fiberoptics that is three months old is out-of-date! To succeed you must regularly read every trade and computer magazine possible. You don't have to read every article, just skim the magazines and read only the articles that are of interest.
There are many free trade publications available to the computing industry if you qualify. Some examples are:
Free Publications:
Internetwork
Computing Canada
Computer Service News
Communication News
LAN Computing
The Computer Paper
Other publications that are worthwhile reading are:
Byte Magazine
MacWorld
PC Computing
Linux Journal
LAN magazine
Most trade magazines now offer web page versions of their magazines on the Internet. In addition, they provide a search-able database of previous articles and programs. Access to the Internet is a necessity if you are going to succeed in the field of network computing. Examples of online resources are:
Linux Gazette
Slashdot (news for nerds)
ZDnet
Linux Documentation Project
Linux.org