The SIGCOMM 2026 Education Workshop, titled “Networking Education in the Age of AI,” recently brought together educators to discuss the future of teaching networking. A central theme emerging from the workshop was the emphasis on engaging students with the design process rather than solely focusing on learning specific protocols.
Discussions highlighted that students could be given more extensive and realistic system-building assignments, potentially aided by AI coding agents for implementation tasks. This approach would allow educators to assess students' learning through discussions about design choices.
One teaching method discussed, “Networking Unplugged,” involves students tackling problems without computers, such as designing mechanisms to send bits along a rope, to help them discover encoding techniques.