Re: [gentoo-user] [WAY OT] wanna learn networking internals

[Alan McKinnon]

On 02/09/2015 21:43, J. Roeleveld wrote:
> On Wednesday, September 02, 2015 02:19:24 PM Francisco Ares wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Sorry for such WAY out of topic message, but Gentoo users are also way out
>> of regular computer users.
>>
>> I intend to learn more deep details about networking intrinsics, (packets,
>> ports, negotiation, UDP, multicast, unicast, TCP, ethernet, DHCP,
>> protocols, and so on) so I decided to recur to this list.  Googling the
>> terms, just gets me to network administration and equipment interconnection.
>>
>> Any hints on web resources for this research?
>
> It would depend on the level you are at now. :)
>
> Generally, I know more than enough about how it all works to do my job and
> keep my own systems running reliably.
>
> But generally I simply listen when the likes of Alan McKinnon start talking
> about networking.

Hey, that's me!

As it turns out, I got a call last week from an old mate who needed
someone to deliver his 2-day TCP/IP course on short notice. I had 2 days
free anyway so I help out.

It all went well till we got into the dirty details of TCP header
fields. You know how that stuff works - a whole bunch of fields that we
mostly ignore and concentrate on just the few we know are important.
Anyway, there was me standing in front of a class going down the list.
And all I could think of was "WTF is most of this stuff??? Half of these
fields I've never heard of!"

There was more fun to come. Someone asked to clarify the exact
differences between unicast, multicast, anycast and any other *cast that
happens to be. Holy cow. Try explain that off the cuff without having
time to think the answer through first :-)

To the OP:

Someone suggested RUTE. That's a good one, it may be 14 years old, but
networking basics have not changed. The Linux Network Administrator's
Guide available at tldp.org is also worth reading.

And then wikipedia too. Technical facts are usually reliable there and
most articles give you nice pictures and tables without assuming you
already know it all anyway.

Finally you already have Gentoo, which is probably the best tool you
could have to find out such stuff. Read up on a topic, grasp the basic
theory, then follow it all through on Gentoo seeing how the bits fit
together.

For the full picture in strict technical language, nothing beats the
proper Internet RFCs. They are not for the faint-hearted though.

I don't want to scare you off but working in spare time it probably
takes something like a year to go from networking user to having a
decent depth of knowledge about it. It's all logical, all the info is
there, and it can be understood. There's just so much of it :-)


>
> You could start with sites like:
>
> http://web.stanford.edu/class/msande91si/www-spr04/readings/week1/InternetWhitepaper.htm
>
> --
> Joost
>


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@×××××.com