I think one of the barriers to 'networking' is there is just so much to cover... Worse still, some of what is considered 'networking' is proprietary technology

I think one of the barriers to 'networking' is there is just so much to cover... Worse still, some of what is considered 'networking' is proprietary technology catered to an environment that uses a particular vendor. That makes the resources that aren't proprietary extremely detailed and muddy, to cover things the proprietary tech shines up at a high level. Therefore, my suggestion for 'learning networking' is to just do it. Set up a LAN at home. Solve the problems as you come across them. Someone at my place of work took this approach, and I thought it made me smile when he said he had this great idea about how he could automatically distribute IP addresses to terminals instead of manually setting them up. I told him about DHCP! Learning by going through the motions. Incidentally, I picked up a copy of a CCNA study guide and the concept of DHCP wasn't covered until 1/3 through the book, after OSI was covered and other low-level topics.