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As a relatively-new Python programmer, I'm finding more and more that networking as it relates to the web and web development is becoming increasingly important to understand.

When I was an active C# ASP.NET programmer making smaller websites with less responsibility this knowledge seemed less important, since there was often a "networking" guy performing any tasks beyond acquiring a domain name for a client.

Is there a resource out there that's the de-facto standard for understanding what's happening between the time a user types a URL and receives the rendered HTML? What about that book makes it special?

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Nothing beats Beej's Guide – Doug T. Jan 28 '11 at 23:26
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When you say "what's happening between the time a user types a URL and receives the rendered HTML", HTTP is much more relevant than TCP/IP, unless you are actually writing a web browser or server, in which case you're going to need to understand both. – NickC Jan 28 '11 at 23:40
@Renesis: I realize that this is a very loaded question, and appreciate the insight about the relevance of HTTP to getting the webpage output. That too is another area in which I would like to learn more! While I may not be writing a web browser or server (at the moment!), I am very interested in the complete lifecycle of a request including all of the details about networking that explain how the request gets from A to B ;) Thanks for the comment :) – mkelley33 Jan 29 '11 at 19:54

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http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/dec/netbooks.html

Comer's books are wonderfully structured.

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This is exactly what I was looking for! I can't wait to dive in. Now: if only I could figure out a way to not sleep for days on end without causing serious harm to my health and psyche ;) Thanks so much! – mkelley33 Jan 29 '11 at 19:56
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There's a series of 3 books by Stevens about TCP/IP :

Lots of good low level gory bits about how the protocol actually works.

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Part one should be sufficient, unless you're going to be hacking IP stacks. – Kristof Provost Jan 5 '12 at 15:47
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Tcpdump.

You can't avoid learning something if you study the output of tcpdump. For example with something like:

tcpdump -s256 -X

And tcpdump is a really powerful tool, when you debug those really weird network related problems. Tcdump gives you the "matrix code" view of the network traffic -- the truth.

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Nice! I love peeling back the layers of abstraction and observing the details at work. Much appreciated. – mkelley33 Jan 29 '11 at 19:49
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For a good comprehensive overview "Computer Networks" by Andrew Tanenbaum is a great book. Depending on your existing knowledge you might want to seek some more basic introductions to the various concepts.

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