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TCP/IP — The Complete Field Guide (Beginner → Expert)

A practical, example-driven reference for the TCP/IP protocol suite: how packets are built, addressed, routed, delivered reliably, and debugged in the real world.

77 chapters · 4 h 27 min of reading

Contents

77 chapters, one page each. Prefer one long page? Read the whole book on one page.

  1. How to use this guide1 min
  2. Table of contents3 min
  3. Part I — Foundations
  4. 1. What a network is, and why TCP/IP won3 min
  5. 2. The TCP/IP model (and how it maps to OSI)2 min
  6. 3. Encapsulation: the nested-envelope model3 min
  7. 4. End-to-end walkthrough: opening https://example.com4 min
  8. Part II — The Link Layer
  9. 5. Ethernet, MAC addresses, and frames3 min
  10. 6. ARP: turning IP addresses into MAC addresses2 min
  11. 7. Switches, broadcast domains, and VLANs2 min
  12. 8. MTU, fragmentation triggers, and jumbo frames2 min
  13. 9. Wi-Fi and other link layers2 min
  14. Part III — The Internet Layer (IPv4)
  15. 10. The IPv4 address and header, field by field3 min
  16. 11. Subnetting, CIDR, and VLSM with worked examples2 min
  17. 12. Special-use addresses, private space, and NAT/PAT3 min
  18. 13. Routing: tables, longest-prefix match, and default routes3 min
  19. 14. ICMP: ping, traceroute, and Path MTU Discovery3 min
  20. 15. IP fragmentation and reassembly in detail2 min
  21. Part IV — The Internet Layer (IPv6)
  22. 16. IPv6 addressing and notation3 min
  23. 17. Neighbor Discovery, SLAAC, and DHCPv62 min
  24. 18. Dual-stack, Happy Eyeballs, and transition mechanisms2 min
  25. Part V — Host configuration
  26. 19. DHCP, from DISCOVER to lease renewal3 min
  27. 20. DNS: resolution, records, caching, and modern transports5 min
  28. Part VI — The Transport Layer: UDP
  29. 21. Ports, sockets, and the connection 4-tuple2 min
  30. 22. UDP: the header, and when "unreliable" is the right choice3 min
  31. Part VII — The Transport Layer: TCP mechanics
  32. 23. The TCP header, field by field4 min
  33. 24. The three-way handshake and connection setup3 min
  34. 25. Connection teardown, half-close, and TIME_WAIT3 min
  35. 26. The TCP finite state machine3 min
  36. Part VIII — TCP reliability
  37. 27. Sequence numbers, cumulative ACKs, and retransmission3 min
  38. 28. Retransmission timeout (RTO), RTT estimation, and Karn's algorithm3 min
  39. 29. Fast retransmit, fast recovery, and SACK3 min
  40. Part IX — TCP flow and congestion control
  41. 30. Flow control: the sliding window, window scaling, and SWS3 min
  42. 31. Congestion control: slow start and congestion avoidance3 min
  43. 32. Reno, NewReno, CUBIC, and BBR3 min
  44. 33. Nagle, delayed ACK, and the interaction bug2 min
  45. 34. Keepalive, and detecting dead peers2 min
  46. Part X — TCP performance engineering
  47. 35. Bandwidth-delay product and buffer sizing3 min
  48. 36. Throughput math: loss, latency, and the Mathis equation2 min
  49. 37. Tuning knobs on Linux (sysctl reference)4 min
  50. Part XI — Application-layer transports
  51. 38. TLS: handshakes, versions, resumption, termination, and offload27 min
  52. 39. HTTP/1.1 vs HTTP/2 vs HTTP/3 (QUIC)4 min
  53. 40. Load balancing: L4 vs L7, DSR, and connection handling3 min
  54. Part XII — Observability and capture
  55. 41. tcpdump and BPF filters3 min
  56. 42. Reading a Wireshark trace like a detective3 min
  57. 43. Socket statistics: ss , /proc , and connection states3 min
  58. Part XIII — Performance forensics
  59. 44. Diagnosing latency, loss, throughput, and bufferbloat4 min
  60. 45. Emulating bad networks with tc / netem3 min
  61. Part XIV — NAT traversal and real-time media
  62. 46. NAT behaviors, STUN, TURN, and ICE4 min
  63. 47. Why VoIP and video use UDP, jitter buffers, and RTP4 min
  64. Part XV — Kernel and NIC internals
  65. 48. The packet's path through the Linux kernel3 min
  66. 49. Offloads: checksum, TSO/GSO/GRO, LRO, RSS, and XDP3 min
  67. Part XVI — Scaling the network
  68. 50. Anycast, ECMP, and BGP in one page4 min
  69. 51. QoS, DSCP, and traffic shaping3 min
  70. Part XVII — Security
  71. 52. Spoofing, SYN floods, RST injection, and off-path attacks5 min
  72. 53. Firewalls, stateful inspection, and conntrack3 min
  73. 54. DDoS shapes and mitigations4 min
  74. Part XVIII — Cloud & container networking
  75. 55. Network namespaces, veth pairs, and bridges3 min
  76. 56. Overlays: VXLAN, and how Kubernetes pods talk3 min
  77. 57. Cloud VPC constructs and their TCP/IP reality4 min
  78. Part XIX — HTTP in depth
  79. 58. Message framing: where does a request end?2 min
  80. 59. Caching: the highest-leverage HTTP feature3 min
  81. 60. Cookies and state2 min
  82. 61. CORS: the browser's cross-origin rules2 min
  83. 62. WebSockets and Server-Sent Events3 min
  84. 63. Range requests, streaming, and compression2 min
  85. 64. HTTP authentication and authorization on the wire2 min
  86. 65. Proxies: forward, reverse, CONNECT, and interception3 min
  87. Part XX — Monitoring and telemetry
  88. 66. What to measure: the four signal families3 min
  89. 67. Device and interface metrics: SNMP and its successors3 min
  90. 68. Flow telemetry: NetFlow, IPFIX, and sFlow3 min
  91. 69. Active probing, synthetic monitoring, and alerting that works4 min
  92. Part XXI — Routing protocols in depth
  93. 70. How routing protocols work: the two families3 min
  94. 71. OSPF in depth4 min
  95. 72. BGP in depth: attributes and path selection3 min
  96. 73. BGP operations: peering, scaling, and failures3 min
  97. 74. First-hop redundancy, multicast, and MPLS/VRF in brief4 min
  98. Appendix A — Troubleshooting playbooks (symptom → cause → fix)
  99. Appendix B — Port and protocol quick reference
  100. Appendix C — Subnetting cheat sheet
  101. Appendix D — tcpdump / ss / ip command cookbook
  102. Appendix E — Glossary
  103. Further reading1 min

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