TCP/IP Illustrated

What Hacker News says

1. atribecalledqstMay 2026
   I've cracked into quite a few programming books over the years and it's pretty crazy how much of an advantage it's given me. I'm a lowly systems engineer, not even a real programmer, but I definitely understand networking better than the majority of programmers at my company because I read Stevens' TCP/IP Illustrated 10 years back. (and I read the OLD version from the 90s that was already dated when I read it!) And then I read UNIX Network Programming to help understand all the different sockets APIs and that's paid dividends too, because I get our network programming code better than most of my coworkers too.

   Then there was that one time I was self-studying computer architecture (Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective) and was able to turn what I learned around and hack our binary code at a customer site because I wasn't in an environment where I could compile our code... and then years later, when I wanted to analyze the ROM of a 90s electronic device with a much simpler instruction set than x86, I wasn't afraid to crack open the thing in Ghidra

   Let's see, what else have I read that's paid dividends over the years:

   - Modern Operating Systems (Tannenbaum)

   - Learning Python (Lutz)

   - JavaScript - The Definitive Guide (Flanagan)

   - Programming PHP (Tatroe)

   - Learning Web Design (Robbins)

   - Algorithms (Sedgewick)

   - A book I read whose name escapes me now, about technologies like RS-282/RS-484 and serial communications in general

   - (I could probably put down Cuckoo's Egg too as an "inspiration" for me ultimately getting interested in computers and networking, and I bet that's not too uncommon a story)

   It's probably a sign of my age (mid 30s for reference), but when I'm curious about something and want to learn it really deeply - I look for a good book on the topic. (although I'm willing to admit that maybe this process hinders me in some ways, because it means I sometimes spend more time studying than I actually do working with a thing - I have spent a LOT more time reading about circuits than building them - but I like studying so I'm happy either way)

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2. aanetApr 2026
   Reading the article and the comments reminded me: Every generation -discovers- learns their foundations anew.

   I learnt about traceroute, ping and other network setup basics in my very first job (early 90s) as a network admin in a remote building in Bangalore, setting up the very first WAN for some of the earliest tech (now) behemoths, when the latency of the WAN -- over the SEA-ME-WE cables -- exceeded ~1-2 seconds. The satellite hops via EU added more latency. Traceroute and ping where your best friends to diagnose the frequent drops, from the building top microwave antenna to the only ISP (govt approved, of course) that offered a whopping 2x 64 kbps links. And that supported an entire org of 400-500 developers, including state-of-the-art video conf system to NYC, Ottawa, Tokyo.

   Curious to figure out how these tools worked, I borrowed copies of the bible (TCP/IP Illustrated - W Richard Stevens [1]), still the most authentic source of all things TCP/IP related.

   I'm not one for nostalgia, but fond memories there. Great to see a modern Rust impl though.

   [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens

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3. tankenmateNov 2025
   One of my favourite books, I even read it a couple of times, even hacked around with xv6 (the x86 port of the edition 6 kernel[0][1], if you do hack around with it in a VM make sure to add HLT to the idle() function, if nothing else it will save your fans).

   One of a small number of books (such as TCP/IP Illustrated[2]) that progressed me from the larval hacker stage.

   I also met Lions when I was a kid, but didn't put 2 + 2 together until 20 years later!

   [0] https://github.com/bringhurst/xv6 [1] https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2011/xv6.html [2] https://www.r-5.org/files/books/computers/internals/net/Rich...

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4. ekr____Oct 2025
   Almost none of them.

   There are a number of problems with trying to learn networking from the RFCs. First, they're specifications, not tutorials, so they just assume that you have a lot of background that you otherwise have to infer. Second, it's very common for a protocol to have been iteratively developed over the years and so split over a number of RFCs. In some cases, people will eventually try to consolidate things into a single document or document suite, but it's a big pain to do that, so it often doesn't happen.

   Finally, a lot of the foundational RFCs were written long before we had a good understanding of how to design a robust networking protocol. For example, if you just implement TCP's original rate control algorithm [RFC 793] you get a system which is very vulnerable to congestion collapse (see https://ee.lbl.gov/papers/congavoid.pdf for more). Even with a more modern specification for RCP as in RFC 9293, you kind of have to work to piece together the shape of a working system. The QUIC RFCs are better because they were written all at once, but it's still not really designed to teach you.

   IMO a better place to start is TCP/IP Illustrated by W. Richard Stevens. Volume 1 really explains the protocols. Volume 2 shows how to actually implement them.

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5. spaceprisonJul 2025
   The TCP/IP Illustrated books by Richard W. Stevens are the best.

   https://archive.org/details/RichardStevensTCPIPIllustratedEN

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6. genmudJan 2024
   I'm still a fan of TCP/IP illustrated (book 1) [1] for understanding the fundamentals. The one from No Starch Press [2] is also a great book.

   Personally, I think if you understand the fundamentals, you will quickly realize things like software defined networks and CDN technologies are just abstractions on top of other stuff.

   [1] - https://www.amazon.com/TCP-Illustrated-Protocols-Addison-Wes...

   [2] - https://nostarch.com/tcpip.htm

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