Hi, all
I am learning Computer Networking this semester, on which I find it quite interesting in learning why Internet is designed like today. And I also enjoy reading paper referred to in the teaching slides, like End-to-End Argument in System Design and The Design Philosophy of the DARPA Internet Protocols.
Could you recommend some other interesting paper/articles to me, especially those related to higher layers like TCP/IP protocols?
Many thanks for your reply.
Generally, the books by Andrew Tanenbaum are worth reading. They are normally used as standard lecture in networking courses.
On the other hand, they are rather basics.
I'm not sure if this is exactly what you were looking for, but there are some really interesting papers out there on peer-to-peer networking.
Some examples:
If you want an introduction to what (not why) the TCP/IP protocols are, a classic book is TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1: The Protocols.
Roy Thomas Fielding wrote his dissertation at UCI about Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures (2000), which has more focus on applications in a networked environment; but I would recommend it, since it's related to your request about learning why Internet is designed like today.
Link: Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures
One classic book is "Interconnections 2nd edition" by Radia Perlman.
Another very good one is "Routing in the Internet" by Christian Huitema.
If you are serious about learning how the Internet works, you also need to know about BGP. A decent introduction is "BGP4 Inter-Domain Routing in the Internet" by John Stewart.
A more advanced topic is MPLS. A very good book on this is "MPLS-Enabled Applications" by Ina Minei and Julian Lucek.
Another more advanced topic is multicast. I could recommend "Interdomain Multicast Routing" by Brian Edwards and others.
The books published by Cisco press tend to be good (although obviously vendor-specific) if you are interested in more practical details of how to configure network equipment.
Finally, "Unix Network Programming, Volume 1" by Richard Stevens is a must read if you want to do network programming.