Tell me more ×
Programmers Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 4 down vote favorite
2

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?

share|improve this question
Nothing beats Beej's Guide – Doug T. Jan 28 '11 at 23:26
3  
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

4 Answers

up vote 1 down vote accepted

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

Comer's books are wonderfully structured.

share|improve this answer
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
up vote 3 down vote

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.

share|improve this answer
1  
Part one should be sufficient, unless you're going to be hacking IP stacks. – Kristof Provost Jan 5 '12 at 15:47
up vote 0 down vote

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.

share|improve this answer
up vote 1 down vote

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.

share|improve this answer
Nice! I love peeling back the layers of abstraction and observing the details at work. Much appreciated. – mkelley33 Jan 29 '11 at 19:49

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.