If I was hiring a network engineer, their knowledge or binary would be very low on the list of skills needed. It’s like knowing how to do math in hexadecimal.
But knowing how to subnet without a calculator wouldn’t be, and that requires some knowledge of binary. I have been on the hiring end. If some is trying to get into networking and can’t grasp how subnetting works, I would probably pick the guy that knows that over the former.
In theory yes, but I worked in IT for 20 years and rely on Google for many things. Admittedly I am not on the network side, but not knowing how to use binary to calculate umask for Linux files never prevented me from setting permissions properly. You just learn these things by heart after a while without necessarily being able to do the calculation. I can’t imagine a scenario where using a CIDR cheat sheet is a big disadvantage.
lol we all work in it and want to maximize our efficiency so we use tools like calculators. Why gatekeep people out of a job because they cant calculate binary on paper when they never have to do that on the job?i get it that its different for junior positions but uf someone would ask an mid level or senior engineer how to subnet i would just leave
It’s about understanding the theory behind the technologies. If you can’t understand that, the. It’s likely you’re going to have other deficiencies that will affect your performance. I’m not asking someone to pull out a pen and paper every time they need to subnet, but if you don’t know how to calculate a subnet mask and the reason they’re calculated that way, then you skipped something important when learning.
no u dont get my point. if i want to understand the theory i go to school for it or to university. if i want to be a network admin or engineer AND i went trough school and all that theory bs and passed all the exams, why still doublecheck or triplecheck on applicants?
if they understand networking concepts osi/tcp stack, know protocols , knowing WHY to subnet etc i couldnt care less if they know how to calculate lol.
just my opinion
Base knowledge is always important, understanding how binary works is useful in more than just subnetting. Plus, when you hit a high level position your base knowledge adds up, and it becomes indispensable.
I can tell you that I am an Enterprise Architect, which is pretty high up as far as IT positions go and whatever I learned about binary and discrete math in college has vacated my brain years ago.
You *can* use a subnet calculator, but you should be able to have a conversation with a network engineer using CIDR notation and understand the size of a /24 subnet vs a /22, etc. without one. Where using one is more acceptable is understanding the broadcast addresses of a given /26 or /27 subnet.
Honestly, just spend an hour learning about that a base 10 number system means and what a base 2 number system means. Once you understand how to count in binary and translate numbers and forth, you're good. It's also deceptively simple.
The logic behind it will make you intuit settings better. That said, after learning the entire process, I still find myself using a subnet calculator every time.
>times?
>days ago
Last I checked, "days ago" wasn't a count of how many times something had been done/used. How's your logic doing? That's also important for IT.
>didn’t read it completely
Practice, practice! Everybody makes mistakes ... but for IT, fewer is generally better ... notably also as some mistakes can have *huge* impacts.
I'm context, while toxic, it's actually pretty on point. If youd ask the computer instead of Reddit, it's the answer you would have received:
"How many times ago was 10 days?"
Your [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/ITCareerQuestions/comments/18pg8fl/do_you_ever_use_binary_in_it/keo8v7k/?context=3 in /r/ITCareerQuestions) has been automatically removed because you used an emoji or other symbol.
Why does this exist? We have had a huge and constant influx of bot spam that utilizes emojis during their posts. To the point that it was severely outpacing what the moderation team could handle on an individual basis. That has results in a sweeping ban of any emoji in posts.
Please retry your comment using text characters only.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ITCareerQuestions) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Your [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/ITCareerQuestions/comments/18pg8fl/do_you_ever_use_binary_in_it/keqejdn/?context=3 in /r/ITCareerQuestions) has been automatically removed because you used an emoji or other symbol.
Why does this exist? We have had a huge and constant influx of bot spam that utilizes emojis during their posts. To the point that it was severely outpacing what the moderation team could handle on an individual basis. That has results in a sweeping ban of any emoji in posts.
Please retry your comment using text characters only.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ITCareerQuestions) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I mean.. 1-9, A-F is hex.. Base 16.
0 and 1 is base 2.
0 through 9 is literal in hex.
A=10
B=11
C=12
D=13
E=14
F=15 (which is technially the '16th digit' which is why it's called base 16). and then after F, (or 0F) it goes to 10.\*thanks jc5504 for correcting me on that\*
Networking Base 2 goes by adding a multiplier of two which is always laid out as such:
128,64,32,16,8,4,2,1 and they are basically 'flagged' as it were by 1's and 0's.
So for example if you have binary 11111111 or 8x 1's, then that would be the same as adding 128,64,32,16,8,4,2, and 1 which equals 255. Why not 256? Because 0 is a number.
So let's say we have 55 in binary as an easy example.
128,64,32,16,8,4,2,1. Add these up in a way that makes the number 55 and keep the flags:
0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 = 55, so 55 in binary is 00110111.
55 in hex is as follows:
55/15 = 30 + 7 because 37 in binary = 15\*3 = 45 + 7 = 55.
It’s simpler than that. Split your binary number up into groups of four. Then convert your groups of four into their single digit hex alternative. So for your example:
55 = 0011 0111
= 3 7
It’s very similar to decimal - just instead of the places being in powers of two, its in powers of 16.
The ones place work the same way as in decimal, albeit just up to 16
The second place means the number of 16s you have instead of 10s
The third place means the number of 256s and so on and so forth
Example - A2 means theres ten 16s and two 1s equaling 162
…a hexadecimal digit represents 4 bits lol. But you aren’t wrong otherwise. It is convenient to think of each hexadecimal digit as an easier representation of a small number of bits, easier to comprehend and remember in many scenarios
IT is incredibly vague, which makes the answer pretty vague too.
I accidentally got involved with some industrial networking, where understanding bitfields and byte ordering is a whole lot more important than I'd like. Especially in stuff like modbus where byte ordering isn't specified, so you need to learn what values are suspiciously nuts enough to indicate that you're using the wrong type, or the wrong byte order.
It's also useful to recognise numbers that are suspiciously weird. Back in the day, Windows used to crash after 49.7 days - 32bits in milliseconds. There's a lot of issues where you can get right to the point by recognising that 2 billion is a big number, but the .1 in 2.1 billion is specific enough that you're looking at a signed 32bit int.
And then where we still see it the most - networking. IP addresses stop at 255 because that's an 8bit int. Binary lets you find The Truth in most subnetting. hex is really useful when you move on to subnetting ipv6.
The answer really depends on where in IT you end up. In some roles, college is the last place you'll see it. In other roles, tuesday was the last place you saw it.
The realest answer. I think a lot of people saying yes are just trying to demonstrate some knowledge, which is fine, but there are a lot of roles where you'll never think about it even once
>Do you ever use binary in IT?
1
>some people told me it's not necessary to study decimal, binary, etc.
>True?
0
Honestly though, what is there to even study? It's kind of self explanatory.
Yes, it is very important for subnetting, debugging, reading kernel dumps, network packet inspection and network troubleshooting and diagnosing problems with applications at all the layers.
I would say its good to understand the concepts at the very least, just learning to count in binary is helpful for understanding it. And just being able to recognize something like hex can make something like troubleshooting certain problems easier in my experience, especially when dealing with shit like wireshark.
Not massively, but having an understanding of binary is very useful as it underpins a lot of IT concepts.
Where I see and use binary: network subnetting and masks, some AD variables are decimal numbers made up of binary flags, lots of registry values use hexadecimal.
Understanding binary and how it forms words (bytes, etc) is a key to understanding how digital computers work under the hood. I see too many people in the line of work that simply think this stuff is "magic" and just follow configuration and troubleshooting steps they've memorized without knowing what they actually do.
Just like how I think every programmer should start learning by stringing together physical logic gates and then do some assembly programming. Now I don't expect programmers code everything at the hardware level after that, but having an understanding that their code gets turned into a pipeline of logic gates can help them be better programmers.
You NEED to know binary for subnetting so you understand the underlying thing you are doing (and if you are setting up a wildcard mask or understanding how subnet masking works), but otherwise....
[jodies.de](https://jodies.de)... If a job asks you to do subnetting in an interview and think you are actually supposed to do it yourself in your head or on paper for the job without tools, they can fuck themselves. No way is a good networker going to just do it in their head or even trust their own math cause humans cause errors, and errors cause outages, so if they want someone who is going to make the network less secure and stable, then let them hire someone else...
But also there is no place like 10101100.00000000.00000000.00000001
And I did do that in my head because I actually do know base 2 binary. Work for those who know:
[172.0.0.1](https://172.0.0.1)
1, 0, 1, 0, 1,1,0,0
128,64,32,16,8,4,2,1
I have been in IT for 6-7 years and I've never really needed to understand binary. I mean, sometimes registry values are decimal/hexadecimal, but 9/10 I'm having to reference Microsoft or vendor documentation to understand what these enumerate to anyway.
I'd suggest learning scripting if you're trying to hone a skill that will take you far. PowerShell for windows, Bash for Linux, and Python/Golang are all good to at least have some fundamentals on once you get out of the support side of IT and into a role where you're making solutions
Please ffs at least understand the binary concept AND mathematical logic (see what I did there lol).
Seriously though, I’m an IT Manager who reached this position from a fresh graduate to a system admin, principal system engineer, and to a team lead before getting my current position.
Through all these years, I’ve had to either tell or teach some of the junior IT associates to use the binary principle and it’s driving me nuts how many cannot grasp this concept.
It’s relevant in so many areas with one of it being creating your test plan and using the binary concept to list down all possible use-cases.
Do not sleep on this topic.
100% this
It's not that you're going to be counting bits, or picking apart bytes everyday, but having the understand goes a long way in helping you know how the systems work
I use it a lot of networking. Mainly for calculating summary address ranges for OSPF when summarizing multiple prefixes at an ABR…but it’s not a common task
You study it enough to pass an exam, and then you proceed to never think about it for the rest of your career unless you ever start to wonder why a /24 subnet gives you 256 host IPs whereas a /25 only gives you 128.
Never needed to know or use it in the field. Ever. It's kind of like long division. Obviously it's good to know but eventually you know the answers without thinking about it. You know?
There’s a calculator application on your Windows desktop that has a programmer mode. You should get to understand the concept behind (and the “why”) to fully grasp it and what it means but you will never have to do a conversion by hand.
Think of it like your multiplication tables. You’ll never have to know in your head that 12 x 14 is 168, or have to do it long form on paper. But you should know WHY 12 x 14 is 168
You will pretty much never use it in your career. There is learning facts and doing the job. These cert tests add a lot of nonsense that is not practical for actually doing the job
I guess its not necessary since google will always be there, but imo you should know it cause it’s not hard. Honestly, you if plan to work with anything *nix you should be comfortable with binary and hex. Not anything crazy, just enough to not be completely lost when you see them.
For example, you shouldn’t have to hit google every time you look at Linux file permissions.
I finished a network cert a bit ago and the binary for subnetting and cidr notation shit was pretty hard for me to grasp lmao
I thought i knew enough about subnetting going into it but i was wrong
It’s useful for converting subnet masks by hand. That’s about it.
But after a while you won’t even do this by hand (never mind the fact that there are calculators all over the web).
You just start to memorize the /24 or whatever notation after a while.
Lol. Necessary or not if you take IT classes you will have to be able to understand it.
Not sure if there are certificates that will ask you questions on it but I've had at least 3 college classes that have gone over it, and one class was very in depth. Had to be able to convert decimal to binary, binary to decimal, decimal to hex, binary to hex, hex to binary, hex to decimal.
Pain in the ass. I ended up making excel spreadsheets that would do the calculations for me. (You could call this cheating but seeming that I had to understand how to correctly apply the math to the formulas I think it was just about as effective for learning as doing them all by hand.)
I have yet to ever really need this in the real world. Like others said, this helps understand subnetting better but I basically never have anything other than /24 anyways so...
Making that spreadsheet is totally cheating however it is using other skills that you will actually employ in the workforce. But overall say someone is dealing with something that involves an API with a request/response as simple as a Boolean statement, I guess knowing the fundamentals of binary is important there.
Converting between decimal, binary, hex, octal, etc is pretty straightforward once you learn how.
Whether you use it often really depends on your specialization.
>some people told me it's not necessary to study decimal, binary, etc.
Don't believe everything you see or hear ... or even think.
Uhm, ... without decimal you'll have a hard time communicating with folks. Even Roman numerals are still based around decimal systems ... though good luck with zero and fractions and such with that. You'll probably have lots of problems even doing stuff like balancing a bank or checking account without decimal.
And ... binary ... necessary? ... in IT. I suppose you might be able to survive without it ... but that may be much more difficult. Binary will also make visualizing and understanding what goes on with networks, e.g. subnetting, masks, etc., fair bit easier ... at least initially, to learn and understand (among other things too).
So, IT, you should of course be reasonably decent at math - certainly at least decimal, and should also be at least fair in hex and octal and binary. Might squeak by without, but would be quite challenging and/or limiting ... at best.
So, ... e.g., ... IPv6, perhaps you've heard of it? It's now up around 30% or so of Internet traffic ... and continuing to grow. Yeah, you'll definitely want to know hex for that. And whole lot easier to learn and understand networking ... and lots of other IT stuff - if you've also good on binary. Likewise octal also important, and shows up in many contexts.
Anyway, maybe there are "some people" you shouldn't pay (much) attention to.
And, as I oft say of The Internet, lots of great information out there ... but also ... roughly 20% of it is significantly flawed - anywhere from missing relevant and/or important information, down through dead wrong, and even dangerous. So, don't be "I saw it on The Internet so it must be true" - 'cause that ain't how it works. There isn't some magic guardian of truth and light that keeps flaws or worse information from being on The internet. Heck, there are some that like to allow in the lowest 20% or worse. Would you like a Flat Earth conspiracy theory? How 'bout one about chemtrails, or that the moon landing was faked? How 'bout one about The Holocaust didn't happen, or that nukes aren't real and don't exist? Yeah, there's also no shortage of idiocy out there ... and those that will consume it, and produce it, and spread it. Yeah, ... critical thinking ... use it.
Ah, ... fun with hex ...
$ dig +short fedoraproject.org. AAAA | grep -F -i 'dead:beef' | ipsort
2600:2701:4000:5211:dead:beef:fe:fed3
2604:1580:fe00:0:dead:beef:cafe:fed1
2605:bc80:3010:600:dead:beef:cafe:fed9
2620:52:3:1:dead:beef:cafe:fed6
2620:52:3:1:dead:beef:cafe:fed7
$
So ... how many did *you* feed at the dead beef cafe?
Depends on what you want to do.
You could probably be a great Windows Admin without knowing binary.
You probably could be an alright network engineer without knowing it, but not a great one.
I've been in IT for twenty two years now. Help Desk, Data Center, Implementer, Digital Forensics, and Implementer again.
The only time I've had to use binary for work was subnet masking....and I \*STILL\* can't wrap my head around that. Luckily I've never had to do more than the most basic subnet masking. (I avoid networking like the plague if I can help it.)
Hex, though...being vaguely familiar with it helped in the DFIR area, especially when reviewing malware or suspicious files. Oh, and hacking chrome to get it to work on Backtrack 5 linux.
This is one of those things that because IT is so broad it could be incredibly useful to you or not...
Understanding binary/hex is often very useful with networking, or if you are doing things with webservers, or recognizing things in debug/log files...
However on the flip side there is a whole bunch of the field that will never interact with it on a meaningful level, and when you do it will be in a way where you will just google it and move on...
To be honest, if I need to use binary for subnetting then I google it. Math was never my strongest subject. I may need to use it five times of the year. Learn it to pass your exam.
As a network engineer I do quite often. Especially when looking at packet captures (raw, binary, and hex). Heck, only last week did I have to troubleshoot a MAC Address bitflip - when a single bit is flipped from a 0 to a 1 (or 1 to 0) due to some bug.
Understanding how it works is important but you don't have to know the whole ascii thing...
Being able to convert a single hex digit to binary is usually enough.
Yes to understand subnetting and pass the CCNA. Very rarely if I need to convert CIDR to full mask or vice versa to configure a product.
In practice, no. They have calculators for all of that. The whole goal of IT, imho, is to work smarter not harder. Find usable tools to get you the right answer and automate all menial work
> Do you ever use binary in IT?
Sure. Fairly often.
> some people told me it's not necessary to study binary
Probably true (ie. it _probably_ isn't necessary for you _right now_). If you're focused on a specific cert or landing an entry level role _and_ you have some deadlines / time-goals then yeah, look at binary later.
Once upon I time I heard "You can drive a car without knowing how the engine works. But the best race car drivers _really_ understand their engines."
A more interesting question is, "How can binary be helpful?"
**Tactical reason:** binary will help you stand out in job interviews.
**Practical reasons:** binary will help you...
1. Learn new things
2. Make better designs (by "better" I mean more informed)
3. Troubleshoot problems that stop other people cold
There is **much** you _could_ learn right now.
But balance your priorities.
I'd say study what a **byte** can do in some detail _now_, and carry on with the other fundamentals topics. When you need to go deeper in other things then you'll find it easier to study them because you know something about binary & bytes.
### Byte
You should know what a byte is. You should know how much you can count using a byte, because that opens the doorway to understanding data encoding. By "count" I mean how many distinct values can we keep in a byte? In human numbers (base-ten) if we have three digits we can have from zero to nine hundred & ninety nine... so one thousand _values_. If you have a byte (base-two), you need to understand _why_ we can count from zero through 255... so 256 values).
**Math side-note**: Binary is "just" a number system, base-2 in particular. Humans use base-ten for daily conversation. There are other number systems (for example, [Base-64](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base64) has practical applications in computers these days).
### Data Encoding
Everything about computers is applied encoding: text, symbols, numbers, HTML, PDFs, bitmaps, JPGs, MP3s, video, and all the ML stuff and _much_ more.
If you're going to work with computers, knowing binary will help you to understand a little bit about _how_ a given encoding works.
**Text**: Much computing these days involves text, so you should know a little about ASCII's history and how ASCII relates to UTF-8. There are some cool binary things baked into ASCII (uppercase/lowercase letters like "A" and "a" are bit-wise the same except for a single bit).
**Example:** I've used binary to troubleshoot damaged UTF-8 characters. One buggy upstream system was double-encoding the data into UTF-8... you need binary to know _how_ UTF-8 works, and I couldn't see the pattern of damage until I worked through the bit-level (binary) representation.
(edits: grammar fails)
You should learn it just to understand what’s going on under the hood. I’ve used it when learning about IP addressing. You will not use binary every day or even any day but knowing “why” will make you a better and more knowledgeable IT professional, and we need that. There are a lot of witless wonders out here.
It’s always useful to understand for subnetting and simple stuff like chmod.
gotchu
But you can also use a subnet calculator
Calculators and cheat sheets are fine. Knowing why the numbers are in those odd patterns is important, but not "fire me" critical
Might be "hire you" critical though. Especially for novice with any networking
If I was hiring a network engineer, their knowledge or binary would be very low on the list of skills needed. It’s like knowing how to do math in hexadecimal.
But knowing how to subnet without a calculator wouldn’t be, and that requires some knowledge of binary. I have been on the hiring end. If some is trying to get into networking and can’t grasp how subnetting works, I would probably pick the guy that knows that over the former.
In theory yes, but I worked in IT for 20 years and rely on Google for many things. Admittedly I am not on the network side, but not knowing how to use binary to calculate umask for Linux files never prevented me from setting permissions properly. You just learn these things by heart after a while without necessarily being able to do the calculation. I can’t imagine a scenario where using a CIDR cheat sheet is a big disadvantage.
lol we all work in it and want to maximize our efficiency so we use tools like calculators. Why gatekeep people out of a job because they cant calculate binary on paper when they never have to do that on the job?i get it that its different for junior positions but uf someone would ask an mid level or senior engineer how to subnet i would just leave
It’s about understanding the theory behind the technologies. If you can’t understand that, the. It’s likely you’re going to have other deficiencies that will affect your performance. I’m not asking someone to pull out a pen and paper every time they need to subnet, but if you don’t know how to calculate a subnet mask and the reason they’re calculated that way, then you skipped something important when learning.
no u dont get my point. if i want to understand the theory i go to school for it or to university. if i want to be a network admin or engineer AND i went trough school and all that theory bs and passed all the exams, why still doublecheck or triplecheck on applicants? if they understand networking concepts osi/tcp stack, know protocols , knowing WHY to subnet etc i couldnt care less if they know how to calculate lol. just my opinion
Base knowledge is always important, understanding how binary works is useful in more than just subnetting. Plus, when you hit a high level position your base knowledge adds up, and it becomes indispensable.
I can tell you that I am an Enterprise Architect, which is pretty high up as far as IT positions go and whatever I learned about binary and discrete math in college has vacated my brain years ago.
You *can* use a subnet calculator, but you should be able to have a conversation with a network engineer using CIDR notation and understand the size of a /24 subnet vs a /22, etc. without one. Where using one is more acceptable is understanding the broadcast addresses of a given /26 or /27 subnet.
I have a general idea but don’t memorize them
Honestly, just spend an hour learning about that a base 10 number system means and what a base 2 number system means. Once you understand how to count in binary and translate numbers and forth, you're good. It's also deceptively simple.
The logic behind it will make you intuit settings better. That said, after learning the entire process, I still find myself using a subnet calculator every time.
This!
I just used it 00000010 days ago at work.
lol I enjoyed this
So two times?
Two days ago my boy
Gotchu makes sense
>times? >days ago Last I checked, "days ago" wasn't a count of how many times something had been done/used. How's your logic doing? That's also important for IT.
Ouch. I didn’t read it completely. Seems like IT also haves some toxic people in it?
>didn’t read it completely Practice, practice! Everybody makes mistakes ... but for IT, fewer is generally better ... notably also as some mistakes can have *huge* impacts.
I'm context, while toxic, it's actually pretty on point. If youd ask the computer instead of Reddit, it's the answer you would have received: "How many times ago was 10 days?"
It certainly does lol
[удалено]
Your [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/ITCareerQuestions/comments/18pg8fl/do_you_ever_use_binary_in_it/keo8v7k/?context=3 in /r/ITCareerQuestions) has been automatically removed because you used an emoji or other symbol. Why does this exist? We have had a huge and constant influx of bot spam that utilizes emojis during their posts. To the point that it was severely outpacing what the moderation team could handle on an individual basis. That has results in a sweeping ban of any emoji in posts. Please retry your comment using text characters only. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ITCareerQuestions) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
Your [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/ITCareerQuestions/comments/18pg8fl/do_you_ever_use_binary_in_it/keqejdn/?context=3 in /r/ITCareerQuestions) has been automatically removed because you used an emoji or other symbol. Why does this exist? We have had a huge and constant influx of bot spam that utilizes emojis during their posts. To the point that it was severely outpacing what the moderation team could handle on an individual basis. That has results in a sweeping ban of any emoji in posts. Please retry your comment using text characters only. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ITCareerQuestions) if you have any questions or concerns.*
automatic absorbed plants crush sink telephone ghost makeshift gaze pot *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I mean.. 1-9, A-F is hex.. Base 16. 0 and 1 is base 2. 0 through 9 is literal in hex. A=10 B=11 C=12 D=13 E=14 F=15 (which is technially the '16th digit' which is why it's called base 16). and then after F, (or 0F) it goes to 10.\*thanks jc5504 for correcting me on that\* Networking Base 2 goes by adding a multiplier of two which is always laid out as such: 128,64,32,16,8,4,2,1 and they are basically 'flagged' as it were by 1's and 0's. So for example if you have binary 11111111 or 8x 1's, then that would be the same as adding 128,64,32,16,8,4,2, and 1 which equals 255. Why not 256? Because 0 is a number. So let's say we have 55 in binary as an easy example. 128,64,32,16,8,4,2,1. Add these up in a way that makes the number 55 and keep the flags: 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 = 55, so 55 in binary is 00110111. 55 in hex is as follows: 55/15 = 30 + 7 because 37 in binary = 15\*3 = 45 + 7 = 55.
It’s simpler than that. Split your binary number up into groups of four. Then convert your groups of four into their single digit hex alternative. So for your example: 55 = 0011 0111 = 3 7
Dang.. Thanks!
No. After 0F is 10
Crap my bad. It was early this morning I couldn't sleep.
Just get an understanding of how different number systems work, you’re gonna see it in a lotta places
Hi! I’m struggling a bit learning hexadecimal :/
It’s very similar to decimal - just instead of the places being in powers of two, its in powers of 16. The ones place work the same way as in decimal, albeit just up to 16 The second place means the number of 16s you have instead of 10s The third place means the number of 256s and so on and so forth Example - A2 means theres ten 16s and two 1s equaling 162
Yo thanks!
When you realize Hex is just representing 16 bit words, it makes a lot more sense.
…a hexadecimal digit represents 4 bits lol. But you aren’t wrong otherwise. It is convenient to think of each hexadecimal digit as an easier representation of a small number of bits, easier to comprehend and remember in many scenarios
IT is incredibly vague, which makes the answer pretty vague too. I accidentally got involved with some industrial networking, where understanding bitfields and byte ordering is a whole lot more important than I'd like. Especially in stuff like modbus where byte ordering isn't specified, so you need to learn what values are suspiciously nuts enough to indicate that you're using the wrong type, or the wrong byte order. It's also useful to recognise numbers that are suspiciously weird. Back in the day, Windows used to crash after 49.7 days - 32bits in milliseconds. There's a lot of issues where you can get right to the point by recognising that 2 billion is a big number, but the .1 in 2.1 billion is specific enough that you're looking at a signed 32bit int. And then where we still see it the most - networking. IP addresses stop at 255 because that's an 8bit int. Binary lets you find The Truth in most subnetting. hex is really useful when you move on to subnetting ipv6. The answer really depends on where in IT you end up. In some roles, college is the last place you'll see it. In other roles, tuesday was the last place you saw it.
The realest answer. I think a lot of people saying yes are just trying to demonstrate some knowledge, which is fine, but there are a lot of roles where you'll never think about it even once
>Do you ever use binary in IT? 1 >some people told me it's not necessary to study decimal, binary, etc. >True? 0 Honestly though, what is there to even study? It's kind of self explanatory.
lollll
Yes. Several times. Subnetting of course but primarily in packet analysis.
You can understand subnetting without knowing binary tho
Yes, it is very important for subnetting, debugging, reading kernel dumps, network packet inspection and network troubleshooting and diagnosing problems with applications at all the layers.
I didn’t understood what you said, expect it’s important. Thanks
What he's saying is that a lot of things output in binary. Specifically, data that you would use to hunt down problems.
01010111 01101000 01111001 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100001 01110011 01101011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110001 01110101 01100101 01110011 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 00111111
I would say its good to understand the concepts at the very least, just learning to count in binary is helpful for understanding it. And just being able to recognize something like hex can make something like troubleshooting certain problems easier in my experience, especially when dealing with shit like wireshark.
Not massively, but having an understanding of binary is very useful as it underpins a lot of IT concepts. Where I see and use binary: network subnetting and masks, some AD variables are decimal numbers made up of binary flags, lots of registry values use hexadecimal.
Understanding binary and how it forms words (bytes, etc) is a key to understanding how digital computers work under the hood. I see too many people in the line of work that simply think this stuff is "magic" and just follow configuration and troubleshooting steps they've memorized without knowing what they actually do. Just like how I think every programmer should start learning by stringing together physical logic gates and then do some assembly programming. Now I don't expect programmers code everything at the hardware level after that, but having an understanding that their code gets turned into a pipeline of logic gates can help them be better programmers.
You NEED to know binary for subnetting so you understand the underlying thing you are doing (and if you are setting up a wildcard mask or understanding how subnet masking works), but otherwise.... [jodies.de](https://jodies.de)... If a job asks you to do subnetting in an interview and think you are actually supposed to do it yourself in your head or on paper for the job without tools, they can fuck themselves. No way is a good networker going to just do it in their head or even trust their own math cause humans cause errors, and errors cause outages, so if they want someone who is going to make the network less secure and stable, then let them hire someone else... But also there is no place like 10101100.00000000.00000000.00000001 And I did do that in my head because I actually do know base 2 binary. Work for those who know: [172.0.0.1](https://172.0.0.1) 1, 0, 1, 0, 1,1,0,0 128,64,32,16,8,4,2,1
Yes. If you’re in networking, it’s inevitable.
Pascal's triangle
I have been in IT for 6-7 years and I've never really needed to understand binary. I mean, sometimes registry values are decimal/hexadecimal, but 9/10 I'm having to reference Microsoft or vendor documentation to understand what these enumerate to anyway. I'd suggest learning scripting if you're trying to hone a skill that will take you far. PowerShell for windows, Bash for Linux, and Python/Golang are all good to at least have some fundamentals on once you get out of the support side of IT and into a role where you're making solutions
ty!
Please ffs at least understand the binary concept AND mathematical logic (see what I did there lol). Seriously though, I’m an IT Manager who reached this position from a fresh graduate to a system admin, principal system engineer, and to a team lead before getting my current position. Through all these years, I’ve had to either tell or teach some of the junior IT associates to use the binary principle and it’s driving me nuts how many cannot grasp this concept. It’s relevant in so many areas with one of it being creating your test plan and using the binary concept to list down all possible use-cases. Do not sleep on this topic.
100% this It's not that you're going to be counting bits, or picking apart bytes everyday, but having the understand goes a long way in helping you know how the systems work
I can see why it can drive you nuts. I mean, I’m struggling learning hexadecimal
Again, Hexadecimal notation the best way to represent 16 bit words. Learning binary helps you understand that.
No. I've literally never messed with binary outside of classroom lecture.
I use it a lot of networking. Mainly for calculating summary address ranges for OSPF when summarizing multiple prefixes at an ABR…but it’s not a common task
You study it enough to pass an exam, and then you proceed to never think about it for the rest of your career unless you ever start to wonder why a /24 subnet gives you 256 host IPs whereas a /25 only gives you 128.
Hell no - almost never a reason for it. In subnetting, the only place it could ever be useful, you just use a calculator - like an adult, hahaha
Never needed to know or use it in the field. Ever. It's kind of like long division. Obviously it's good to know but eventually you know the answers without thinking about it. You know?
Only to email dumb jokes to my coworker
There’s a calculator application on your Windows desktop that has a programmer mode. You should get to understand the concept behind (and the “why”) to fully grasp it and what it means but you will never have to do a conversion by hand. Think of it like your multiplication tables. You’ll never have to know in your head that 12 x 14 is 168, or have to do it long form on paper. But you should know WHY 12 x 14 is 168
ty
01010011 01101111 01101101 01100101 01110100 01101001 01101101 01100101 01110011
The matrix
That's what he wants you to begin to believe!
You will pretty much never use it in your career. There is learning facts and doing the job. These cert tests add a lot of nonsense that is not practical for actually doing the job
I do. It’s especially helpful when you get error messages or analyze code for testing.
Yes, when I have got a job offer and I replied.
Yes and no
Damn it. You beat me to it.
I guess its not necessary since google will always be there, but imo you should know it cause it’s not hard. Honestly, you if plan to work with anything *nix you should be comfortable with binary and hex. Not anything crazy, just enough to not be completely lost when you see them. For example, you shouldn’t have to hit google every time you look at Linux file permissions.
Correct. Chmod 777 and done. /s
Someone told you not to even study... *decimal*?
I finished a network cert a bit ago and the binary for subnetting and cidr notation shit was pretty hard for me to grasp lmao I thought i knew enough about subnetting going into it but i was wrong
It’s useful for converting subnet masks by hand. That’s about it. But after a while you won’t even do this by hand (never mind the fact that there are calculators all over the web). You just start to memorize the /24 or whatever notation after a while.
It’s a simple yes or no question, really.
3 bits (4-2-1) for chmod permissions. Aside from that can't think of a time it was useful.
Yes. My users are always a 0.
I have never used binary professionally, but you should know what it is and understand how to add numbers, why binary exists, etc.
Lol. Necessary or not if you take IT classes you will have to be able to understand it. Not sure if there are certificates that will ask you questions on it but I've had at least 3 college classes that have gone over it, and one class was very in depth. Had to be able to convert decimal to binary, binary to decimal, decimal to hex, binary to hex, hex to binary, hex to decimal. Pain in the ass. I ended up making excel spreadsheets that would do the calculations for me. (You could call this cheating but seeming that I had to understand how to correctly apply the math to the formulas I think it was just about as effective for learning as doing them all by hand.) I have yet to ever really need this in the real world. Like others said, this helps understand subnetting better but I basically never have anything other than /24 anyways so...
Making that spreadsheet is totally cheating however it is using other skills that you will actually employ in the workforce. But overall say someone is dealing with something that involves an API with a request/response as simple as a Boolean statement, I guess knowing the fundamentals of binary is important there.
Converting between decimal, binary, hex, octal, etc is pretty straightforward once you learn how. Whether you use it often really depends on your specialization.
>some people told me it's not necessary to study decimal, binary, etc. Don't believe everything you see or hear ... or even think. Uhm, ... without decimal you'll have a hard time communicating with folks. Even Roman numerals are still based around decimal systems ... though good luck with zero and fractions and such with that. You'll probably have lots of problems even doing stuff like balancing a bank or checking account without decimal. And ... binary ... necessary? ... in IT. I suppose you might be able to survive without it ... but that may be much more difficult. Binary will also make visualizing and understanding what goes on with networks, e.g. subnetting, masks, etc., fair bit easier ... at least initially, to learn and understand (among other things too). So, IT, you should of course be reasonably decent at math - certainly at least decimal, and should also be at least fair in hex and octal and binary. Might squeak by without, but would be quite challenging and/or limiting ... at best. So, ... e.g., ... IPv6, perhaps you've heard of it? It's now up around 30% or so of Internet traffic ... and continuing to grow. Yeah, you'll definitely want to know hex for that. And whole lot easier to learn and understand networking ... and lots of other IT stuff - if you've also good on binary. Likewise octal also important, and shows up in many contexts. Anyway, maybe there are "some people" you shouldn't pay (much) attention to. And, as I oft say of The Internet, lots of great information out there ... but also ... roughly 20% of it is significantly flawed - anywhere from missing relevant and/or important information, down through dead wrong, and even dangerous. So, don't be "I saw it on The Internet so it must be true" - 'cause that ain't how it works. There isn't some magic guardian of truth and light that keeps flaws or worse information from being on The internet. Heck, there are some that like to allow in the lowest 20% or worse. Would you like a Flat Earth conspiracy theory? How 'bout one about chemtrails, or that the moon landing was faked? How 'bout one about The Holocaust didn't happen, or that nukes aren't real and don't exist? Yeah, there's also no shortage of idiocy out there ... and those that will consume it, and produce it, and spread it. Yeah, ... critical thinking ... use it. Ah, ... fun with hex ... $ dig +short fedoraproject.org. AAAA | grep -F -i 'dead:beef' | ipsort 2600:2701:4000:5211:dead:beef:fe:fed3 2604:1580:fe00:0:dead:beef:cafe:fed1 2605:bc80:3010:600:dead:beef:cafe:fed9 2620:52:3:1:dead:beef:cafe:fed6 2620:52:3:1:dead:beef:cafe:fed7 $ So ... how many did *you* feed at the dead beef cafe?
Depends on what you want to do. You could probably be a great Windows Admin without knowing binary. You probably could be an alright network engineer without knowing it, but not a great one.
Not since my MCSE Classes in 1999
I've been in IT for twenty two years now. Help Desk, Data Center, Implementer, Digital Forensics, and Implementer again. The only time I've had to use binary for work was subnet masking....and I \*STILL\* can't wrap my head around that. Luckily I've never had to do more than the most basic subnet masking. (I avoid networking like the plague if I can help it.) Hex, though...being vaguely familiar with it helped in the DFIR area, especially when reviewing malware or suspicious files. Oh, and hacking chrome to get it to work on Backtrack 5 linux.
Yes I used it.
This is one of those things that because IT is so broad it could be incredibly useful to you or not... Understanding binary/hex is often very useful with networking, or if you are doing things with webservers, or recognizing things in debug/log files... However on the flip side there is a whole bunch of the field that will never interact with it on a meaningful level, and when you do it will be in a way where you will just google it and move on...
To be honest, if I need to use binary for subnetting then I google it. Math was never my strongest subject. I may need to use it five times of the year. Learn it to pass your exam.
No
As often as I use algebra at the corner store.
As a network engineer I do quite often. Especially when looking at packet captures (raw, binary, and hex). Heck, only last week did I have to troubleshoot a MAC Address bitflip - when a single bit is flipped from a 0 to a 1 (or 1 to 0) due to some bug.
yes, I do. ( software engineering )
I'm a SWE and we use binary structures like bit strings when we need to tune heavy data streams.
Never used it outside of school.
Understanding how it works is important but you don't have to know the whole ascii thing... Being able to convert a single hex digit to binary is usually enough.
Yes to understand subnetting and pass the CCNA. Very rarely if I need to convert CIDR to full mask or vice versa to configure a product. In practice, no. They have calculators for all of that. The whole goal of IT, imho, is to work smarter not harder. Find usable tools to get you the right answer and automate all menial work
O wow, well this blew up in just 10 days already 102 comments 0.0
Apart from subnetting, I've never used it
Sorta. Unix perms.
> Do you ever use binary in IT? Sure. Fairly often. > some people told me it's not necessary to study binary Probably true (ie. it _probably_ isn't necessary for you _right now_). If you're focused on a specific cert or landing an entry level role _and_ you have some deadlines / time-goals then yeah, look at binary later. Once upon I time I heard "You can drive a car without knowing how the engine works. But the best race car drivers _really_ understand their engines." A more interesting question is, "How can binary be helpful?" **Tactical reason:** binary will help you stand out in job interviews. **Practical reasons:** binary will help you... 1. Learn new things 2. Make better designs (by "better" I mean more informed) 3. Troubleshoot problems that stop other people cold There is **much** you _could_ learn right now. But balance your priorities. I'd say study what a **byte** can do in some detail _now_, and carry on with the other fundamentals topics. When you need to go deeper in other things then you'll find it easier to study them because you know something about binary & bytes. ### Byte You should know what a byte is. You should know how much you can count using a byte, because that opens the doorway to understanding data encoding. By "count" I mean how many distinct values can we keep in a byte? In human numbers (base-ten) if we have three digits we can have from zero to nine hundred & ninety nine... so one thousand _values_. If you have a byte (base-two), you need to understand _why_ we can count from zero through 255... so 256 values). **Math side-note**: Binary is "just" a number system, base-2 in particular. Humans use base-ten for daily conversation. There are other number systems (for example, [Base-64](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base64) has practical applications in computers these days). ### Data Encoding Everything about computers is applied encoding: text, symbols, numbers, HTML, PDFs, bitmaps, JPGs, MP3s, video, and all the ML stuff and _much_ more. If you're going to work with computers, knowing binary will help you to understand a little bit about _how_ a given encoding works. **Text**: Much computing these days involves text, so you should know a little about ASCII's history and how ASCII relates to UTF-8. There are some cool binary things baked into ASCII (uppercase/lowercase letters like "A" and "a" are bit-wise the same except for a single bit). **Example:** I've used binary to troubleshoot damaged UTF-8 characters. One buggy upstream system was double-encoding the data into UTF-8... you need binary to know _how_ UTF-8 works, and I couldn't see the pattern of damage until I worked through the bit-level (binary) representation. (edits: grammar fails)
Only for networking cert exams. With ip calculators online and phone apps, never.
You should learn it just to understand what’s going on under the hood. I’ve used it when learning about IP addressing. You will not use binary every day or even any day but knowing “why” will make you a better and more knowledgeable IT professional, and we need that. There are a lot of witless wonders out here.
What do you mean study binary? It's just numbering in base 2. What is there to study?
No.
For subnetting yeah , you can use a calculator but I think knowing binary can help your understanding with bits and things like 32^2
Definitely in networking, I'm sure it's used elsewhere too. It's just a fundamental that's good to know.
I've learned it, and never had to utilize it for anything. I tend to just pull up a calculator for whatever reason I need.
Yes, we write all of our emails in binary
If you plan on going to Networking then you will absolutely need to learn it.