Including classical topics from sockets, to the TCP/IP stack, to DNS, to AnyCast, and similar layers and technologys, but also modern networking setups that might include cloud providers, or other 2024-ish considerations
https://gaia.cs.umass.edu/kurose_ross/index.php
Starting with the 6th edition, it has separated control and forwarding planes for the network layer to reflect the increasing popularity of software-defined networking (SDN) i.e. evolution of hardware centric to software centric networking. The fact that even before 6th edition when the chapter on networking is still monolithic (combined chapter on control and forwarding), it has already mentioned about the separation concerns between the control and forwarding planes while other popular textbooks still not highlighting this important matter. In addition, unlike many textbooks you can download all the supporting materials slides, exercises, animation, etc, of the from the authors' public website and Prof. Kurose video lectures are also available in Youtube.
My main wish lists for the next edition (9th) hopefully include Smart-NIC for modern approach to in-network computation and also the newly standardized segment routing for network layer QoS.
If there's The Nobel Prize in Literature for textbook authors, the authors of this book should be more than deserving.
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...
- Kurose, Computer Networks a top down approach
- tcp/ip illustrated volume 1
- the no starch tcp/ip book
For labs,
- at your workplace or homelab, I’d click through the network configs in your cloud. This hits maybe on “modern networking,” although the theories in the books will match to what you see in cloud just maybe with cloud product names. Reading through terraform repos is also good
- GNS3 lab software to build networks you read about in those books.
Or tbh, just doing a net+ cert would get you in a good place for basic competency to augment a dev job.
Top of mind - there is a logic to it and it’s quite interesting technology. Learn to thing in terms of protocols and their rules and it’ll open up.
That is generally considered the gold standard for professional network education.
Yes, it’s networking according to Cisco and in some cases they do try to push some of their products as commercial solutions. However, the proprietary stuff is clearly identified by Cisco intentionally in the educational materials because the goal is education first even if you favor a competitor’s products. Cisco makes money on their educational materials and certifications so they can afford to separate their tiny bits of proprietary stuff from the education as necessary to build a strong professional labor force ready to consume their products years in the future.
I'd also recommend "Network Basics for Hackers" by OccupytheWeb [2]
- Interconnections: Bridges, Routers, Switches, and Internetworking Protocols (https://www.amazon.com/Interconnections-Bridges-Switches-Int...)
It covers a broader range of topics than some of the other books mentioned here and helps with an understanding of where existing tech comes from and why. Also it covers topics that you don't necessarily need to know if you're only operating in a cloud environment, but that help to understand what is going on in those far off data centers.
https://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Network-How-Works-Modern/...
The previous best book was TCPIP Illustrated. The author of Illustrated Network was a fan of TCPIP Illustrated and wrote their book as a modern equivalent.
Excerpt:
https://wgoralski.com//wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Illustrate...
Bruce and Larry's 6th edition of Computer Networking: A Systems Approach is free to read online, or you can buy a copy. Both have a long list of achievements in the networking space.
Recently they've been publishing smaller more focused books on many topics.
(full disclosure, I helped write the Edge Cloud OPs one)
The Illustrated Network: How TCP/IP Works in a Modern Network by Walter Goralski.
Take a good look at the ToC, covers a lot of different aspects of a "Modern Network". Start with this and then follow up with other detailed books some of which are mentioned in my other comment in this thread.
That's what all the training materials are missing. I want to fast track this section with practical practice problems.
Is there some gamified course? Perhaps literally a game? I remember playing a game where you build your CPU with NANDs, is there something like that for networking maybe?
It's a challenge of itself, and will force you to demonstrate your understanding
To illustrate why I say this, let me give you some back story. In the late 1990's (98 or thereabouts) I was working in IT, but not as a programmer. I still had not finished my C.S. degree, and I wasn't applying for any programming jobs because at that time I thought no one would hire me without a degree. (as an aside, I quickly found out how wrong I was when I actually started applying for programming jobs in late 1999 / early 2000, but that's a story for another day). Anyway, I was doing a combination of network administration (Novell Netware 4 t3h win!), desktop support, and AS/400 operations. Since networking was part of my job, and networks fundamentally fascinated me, I spend a decent amount of time reading books on TCP/IP, Ethernet, socket programming, etc. Including the classics like TCP/IP Illustrated and Internetworking with TCP/IP (there's some book recommendation after all, hah!) and eventually studied for, and passed, the Network+ certification test in late 1999.
Shortly after that I got my first programming job and left all that networking engineering stuff behind. And I don't miss it, especially getting fiberglass crap all over my hands and arms while pulling ethernet cable through drop ceilings, etc. But anyway, the point is.. over the past 23 some odd years, the networking knowledge I acquired has been ridiculously valuable to me, and that value just seems to keep growing. I mean, the joke is "every system is a distributed system now" and that's actually close to true and not a joke in many cases. Nearly everything we build now involves a networking element. And when the network is broken, the system is broken. And guess what? The network breaks. A lot[1]. And knowing just enough to debug things like DNS resolution problems and what-not goes a long way.
My current day-job has me doing a lot of work with AKS and Istio on Azure, and one of my "specialities" if you want to call it that, is ingress. I spend a lot of time helping teams get things set up so that traffic comes in and hits their Istio ingress gateway, whether that be by integrating with Azure App Gateway, API-M, IBM API-C, or whatever. And it's once every couple of weeks or so that I just blow somebody away with my genius (hah, haha) by doing something like editing my hosts file to selectively override a DNS value so I can test by short-cutting straight to the ingress load balancer and bypass some upstream component, or something similar. Whipping out "dig" just has them rolling in the floor. And using netstat, netcat, etc? It's like I'm doing black magic or something.
The moral of this little story is that having even a fairly rudimentary knowledge of networking can go a long way. And as networks have become more and more fundamental to everything in computing, that's only become more true in my experience. So yeah, I highly recommend spending some time on this topic, regardless of which resources you choose to study.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacies_of_distributed_compu...
I had classes using those.
Not a programmer.
Guess u dont learn CCNA in CS degree?
Two things strike me as odd about networking compared to many other IT/software fields:
First, it evolves much, much slower than anything else. Everything I learned 2 or even 3 decades ago is still relevant. Ethernet, DNS, DHCP, TCP/IP. New things got bolted on but everything old is still relevant. Yes, even in the modern cloud.
Second, I've met so few in the fields that actually understand anything about networking. Even as basic as an ip address and subnet. As long as the web page loads and the data is flowing, people stop caring fast. When the network breaks, most software devs are stomped and can't even do the most basic troubleshooting.
My only recommendation is to start with the absolute basic and learn from first principles. Ethernet, IPv4 (packets, IP addresses, subnets, routes), UDP, DHCP, DNS, TCP, HTTP, tunnels and VPNs, in that order. Use wireshark along the way and research everything that is unclear before going up the stack.
Try to run your own router/firewall using openwrt or pfsense/opnsense.
In retrospect, should've been called "Networking for programmers". Short. Concise. Examples for all operating systems including Windows. That will get you started. After that, to level-up, any book with good ratings would do. And you will also know which part of the networking stack you want to learn more about, thus, you'd pick the correct book for yourself. But this one is a must have if you're feeling very uncertain about your understanding of networking concepts and how everything glues together.
1. An Engineering Approach to Computer Networking : ATM Networks, the Internet, and the Telephone Network by S.Keshav
2. Foundations of Modern Networking: SDN, NFV, QoE, IoT, and Cloud by William Stallings.
3. The TCP/IP Guide by Charles Kozierok - http://www.tcpipguide.com/
4. Hands-On Network Programming with C: Learn socket programming in C and write secure and optimized network code by Lewis Van Winkle.
5. The All-New Switch Book: The Complete Guide to LAN Switching Technology by Rich Seifert and James Edwards.
To get an idea of the overall Internet Architecture/Layouts, i also recommend the following two old books to get the background information. Things have changed a lot now but are almost always built/modified on the bedrock described here.
a. Internet System Handbook by David Lynch and Marshall Rose.
b. Internet Architectures by Daniel Minoli and Andrew Schmidt.
Finally, you should look at all the configuration parameters of your home router (wan+lan+wifi), go through their documentation/google as necessary and make sure you understand what they are and how they are used. This is where the theory read from the above books meets practice in the real world.