Reddit reviews TCP/IP Illustrated, Vol. 1: The Protocols (Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series)

Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking
All of your security infrastructure is meaningless if I can call Suzy in Accounting and ask her for her password.


TCP/IP Illustrated, Vol. 1: The Protocols
Yes, I know this book is old. This book is the Mutha-Fecking 1969 Camaro 454SS of networking books.
It simply NEVER goes out of style.


Wireshark for Security Professionals: Using Wireshark and the Metasploit Framework
If you don't have a basic understanding of Wireshark and Packet Analysis, you're useless to me.
You don't have to be a wizard. You don't have to look at the Matrix and see Blondes or Red Heads. But you MUST possess a clue.
I have no specific love for this book. Just pick any good looking Wireshark book writen for an InfoSec audience.

DNS and BIND (5th Edition)
The author "Cricket Liu" is THE DNS guy. He literally wrote the book on DNS.

Designing for Cisco Internetwork Solutions Foundation Learning Guide: (3rd Edition)
The Cisco CCDA track will teach you focus on technical requirements, and aligning network functionality to match those requirements. Data Networking is CRITICAL knowledge to InfoSec professionals. But you might find this an easier starting point than CCNA.

You're not going to get a better intro than "TCP/IP Illustrated, Vol. 1" by W. Richard Stevens. Ignore the other volumes.

https://www.amazon.com/TCP-Illustrated-Vol-Addison-Wesley-Professional/dp/0201633469

The TCP/IP Illustrated series is very good, if you have some basic knowledge. If you are just starting out, then I'd recommend Tanenbaum's Computer Networks. Whatever book you get, make sure it's one that focusses on Ethernet and TCP/IP, for the most part. You can specialize into other networks later as you need to, but those two are the most widely used in industry by far.

Another way to learn about networking is through practice. Set up a home network, write a basic client and server using sockets, play with tcpdump, etc.

Tcp/up basics But seriously, TCP/up illustrated by Stevens

BS in computer science. My track / focus was network systems. I was always good at tshoot and I'm very curious. I worked for a vendor that makes 3gpp radios and did a lot of protocol and transport work (tshoot, configuration, band planning, scheduler analysis). My biggest skills that help me here are knowing Linux really well, understanding low level hardware, and traffic algorithms. This book and the next two volumes got me interested in this stuff. I'm an architect at a tier 1 ISP and my job description is best described as network systems integration. I know Sandvine from architecting solutions numerous times across several ISPs. I'm 20 years into my career and started out as an IT help desk tech, moved into systems admin, and just kept learning and searching for bigger better jobs. I got my first ISP job from a cold approach at a job fair at a college.

http://www.amazon.com/TCP-Illustrated-Vol-Addison-Wesley-Professional/dp/0201633469

Great, I'll grab a copy tonight!

Well TCP/IP is an entire protocol suite. In addition to IP, TCP, and UDP, it includes higher level protocols like HTTP (uses TCP), DNS (UDP more commonly than TCP), and ICMP (uses IP, not TCP or UDP).

My understanding is that it's called TCP/IP because those were the first protocols and everything else coalesced around/on top of them. Microsoft offers a pretty decent chart showing examples of the layering/encapsulation of the protocols in the suite here.

If you want to dive deeper, Steven's three-volume TCP/IP Illustrated is the de facto reference manual for the Internet -- though dated, it's still very useful and available for cheap used. Alternatively, No Starch came out with a tome of their own called TCP/IP Guide which I've heard a couple colleagues recommend.

The TCP/IP Guide

The Illustrated Network

A bit dated, but pretty well respected:
TCP/IP Illustrated (There are 3 volumes)
----------------------------------
You can find most of this info freely on the web though.

TCP/IP illustrated by W Richard Stevens:

https://www.amazon.com/TCP-Illustrated-Vol-Addison-Wesley-Professional/dp/0201633469

TCP/IP Illustrated is a classic, although it goes into so much detail at times that it's difficult to keep the bigger picture in mind.

I've enjoyed TCP/IP Guide it goes into a lot of depth as well, particularly in the later chapters, but gives a better high-level overview imo.

Read these:
http://www.amazon.com/TCP-Illustrated-Vol-Addison-Wesley-Professional/dp/0201633469
http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Networks-5th-Andrew-Tanenbaum/dp/0132126958

Well, most of them you will find are just like the one you have very heavy reading and slow. If you are a real glutton for punishment, the real meat of everything is spelled out in the RFC's(Request for Comments). This one is pretty short and to the point, if you can understand it, it will help you understand most other networking jargon:

-----
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1180.txt

it is described thusly:

1. Introduction
   
   This tutorial contains only one view of the salient points of TCP/IP,
   and therefore it is the "bare bones" of TCP/IP technology.
   
   ------
   
   So, its just the nitty gritty, but most times, I find that is the best place to get started. Some of the things you will want to learn/study are the different networking layers specifcally layer2(switched/VLAN) and layer3(routed) networking. You will want to learn about SNMP and ARP as they are both very important to networking and network management. If you are interested in the nitty gritty details of how packets get pushed around the network, you will want to learn about some of the dynamic routing procotols used, such as BGP, OSPF, EIGRP, and RIP. There are others as well, but these will definitely get you started.
   
   My suggestion is this, if you can, study the RFC"s as they will give you a nuts and bolts understanding of what needs to happen. That will soften the blow going into any networking books you might run into. If you are specifically looking for networking books, you can almost never go wrong with O'reilly books. However, I always poke around on Amazon reviews before buying a book as if there is a better book, it will often be mentioned.
   
   Here are a few that adorn my bookshelf:
   
   http://www.amazon.com/TCP-Illustrated-Vol-Addison-Wesley-Professional/dp/0201633469
   
   being that I am in network mgmt, SNMP is crucial, here are some good ones:
   
   http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Guide-Snmpv3-Network-Management/dp/0130214531/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322060915&sr=1-6
   
   http://www.amazon.com/SNMP-Management-Sidnie-M-Feit/dp/0070203598/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322060915&sr=1-5
   
   and for the true masochist:
   
   http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-SNMP-MIBs-David-Perkins/dp/0134377087/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322060915&sr=1-4
   
   for the routing protocols:
   
   http://www.amazon.com/Networking-2nd-Jeffrey-S-Beasley/dp/0131358383/ref=sr_1_11?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322061108&sr=1-11
   
   Let me know if you have any specific questions and I will see if I can point you in the right direction! Good luck.
   

Here:
https://www.amazon.com/TCP-Illustrated-Vol-Addison-Wesley-Professional/dp/0201633469

It's hard because it's important. Learn TCP\IP, it's a solid investment on your time.

Also, to get some street cred read this:

http://phrack.org/issues/51/11.html

Read the man page for nmap, learn it, understand it, and then learn it some more.

Here's to your success (wo)man

I'm in the same boat as you. I'm currently trying to lay the foundation for an InfoSec career and I've been bookmarking some of the helpful posts I find. Here's what I have so far:

http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/dpsfp/can_netsec_help_me_to_get_started_into_the/
http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/edv2u/good_places_to_start_a_career_in_netsec/
http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/d3hua/how_to_get_started_in_netsec/
http://www.chakraborty.ch/organization/getting-started-in-security/

I just bought this book, I've seen it recommended several times as a great place to start learning TCP/IP.

Consider getting, or at least studying up on, the A+, Net+, Linux+, and Security+ CompTIA certs. They may help you get entry-level jobs and are a good way to learn the basics, but don't count on them to get you serious employment.

>On Ubuntu, all I did was start the ufw service.

I am not a fan of ufw, I suggest you to learn iptables.

iptables tutorial is the standard reading, but before this I suggest to read TCP/IP Illustrated

>How does the system perform after encryting the filesystem?

If you'd use LUKS with AES 256, it'll go smoothly, even on not very new hardware. If you are that concerned, you may choose to encrypt home directory and swap only, not the whole root filesystem.

so everyone seems to be giving some good but general answers so here's a few specifics. They'll be most useful for learning unix but will also give you a good overview for any administration.

The Design of the UNIX Operating System
http://www.amazon.com/Design-Operating-System-Prentice-Hall-Software/dp/0132017997/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1344385714&sr=8-1&keywords=the+design+of+the+unix+operating+system
Very good book to understand how a kernel works and interacts with different functionality of an operating system.


TCP/IP Illustrated
http://www.amazon.com/TCP-Illustrated-Vol-Addison-Wesley-Professional/dp/0201633469/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1344385781&sr=1-1&keywords=tcp+ip+illustrated
Basically the bible of anything tcp/ip related. Volume 1 is the most important. Volume 2 and 3 are good as well but require knowing some calculus.

Really anything by W. Richard Stevens is great, though some of it is more on the programming side
http://www.amazon.com/W.-Richard-Stevens/e/B000AP9GV4/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

Then there's the man pages.
Go into /bin/, /sbin, /usr/bin/ and /usr/sbin/ and just read the man page for every command.

If you want to learn how mail works, learn how (buy books or whatever you can find online) the protocols work not the applications. So learn how smtp, pop3, imap all work. Read what you can find, read RFCs for the protocols, etc. Then once you know how the protocols work you can read how an application like sendmail or qmail works. Books by oreilly are usually pretty good for this as well.

Set up linux systems, slackware is a great distro to learn linux from, and just setting up things like a lamp server, mail server, etc. Don't install applications from a repository, compile applications when you want to install them.

If you search my comments far enough back (maybe a month?) I posted something for someone asking a similar question and went into a lot more depth and a lot more chronological of what to do to become a unix sys admin.

edit: oh the two most important things about being a sysadmin.

• It's not about how much you know, it's about how fast you can figure out what you need to know.
  
• A good sysadmin has automated everything. Sysadmins are inherently lazy and hate to have to do anything twice.

Free online guide: http://www.tcpipguide.com

One of the best books, but a bit rough for a beginner: http://www.amazon.com/TCP-Illustrated-Vol-Addison-Wesley-Professional/dp/0201633469

Keep in mind that bringing your skill up to a professional level is something that most people spend years doing even when attending school or on the job training. Don't expect to spend a couple months reading and be ready to work in the industry.

As /u/dark15 said, Network Warrior is a great read. Also check out:
Internet Routing Architectures and TCP/IP Illustrated

Generally I go here if I want a good overview and operational view.

TCP, UDP.

If I want to go for the long haul and depth....I start here (I used this list as it's nice and abbreviated of what does what in RFC land). Reading through those will give you a much better idea of how things were "supposed" to work. How they work with a vendor will always be up to interpretation, but the vendors are interpreting those RFCs.

There are quite a few books on Amazon that will teach it to you as well. I honestly would consider getting them too. This, this, this, this.

There's so many good books but those should give you that deep understanding.

If you are serious about getting into networking then you need to read the following to start with:

TCP/IP fundamentals
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0201633469/ref=oh_details_o05_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Ethernet definitive guide
http://www.amazon.com/Ethernet-Definitive-Charles-E-Spurgeon/dp/1449361846/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397246249&sr=1-1&keywords=ethernet+the+definitive+guide

Then install GNS and create/break stuff.

Then get a CCNA under your belt, will take about 2 months of study after work to pass the exam.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1118749618/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Having the CCNA under your belt should easily get you a foot in the door.

However to understand networking you will be spending your working life studying to stay current...

I have a tear in my eye and an urge to hug the OP.

I remember a while back Network General, the product I learned sniffing on, came out with a product through acquisition called Apera and they put it on their distributed sniffer. We put 8 of those things in our network and they had live packet captures with filtering and application data with a rolling 2 hour window. I was like a kid in a candy store.

"Its the network it has to be the network, we checked everything else". Then 30 minutes later I can come back and say "why is this stored proc going into your SQL server from your application farm taking 6 minutes to run for a basic web app? Why is your network time 2ms while your server and backend time is 5.99999 minutes?!?!?! Kindly troubleshoot your shit before you blame mine."

Then net scout bought network general and ruined the product. I miss the ant.

****As a side note there is a great couple of chapters in "TCP/IP illustrated volume 1" detailing 3 way handshake, half open tcp, bounce charts, flight time, etc. Ive always considered the book a bible for any network engineer, especially one who wants to use Wireshark on a regular basis. You have to get the first edition(first edition, volume 1) though, they came out with a second edition that I hear isn't as good. Its the one with the white planet on the cover and a pink floyd dark side of the moon thing going on.
http://www.amazon.com/TCP-Illustrated-Vol-Addison-Wesley-Professional/dp/0201633469/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1398127261&sr=8-2&keywords=tcp+ip+illustrated+1st+edition

Más que CCNA, empezaría por acá:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0201633469/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1498615690&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=stevens+tcp+ip+illustrated&dpPl=1&dpID=51jbAgYTQ8L&ref=plSrch

OK, got it. Perhaps the low level details aren't exactly what you need. BTW, I've tried reading some of these books e.g. this one: http://www.amazon.com/TCP-Illustrated-Vol-Addison-Wesley-Professional/dp/0201633469/ref=pd_sim_b_2 and they are not for the faint of heart.

What's worked better for me are online articles like the one above. While I'd love to grok TCP/IP at a deep level, I really don't need to know that much about it. Although I could see how it would be extremely useful if I worked at a networking company.

tl;dr good luck! I find Charles to be a bit easier to use than Fiddler.

While being a self taught sys admin is great, learning the internals of how things work can really extend your knowledge beyond what you may have considered possible. This starts to get more into the CS portion of things, but who cares. It's still great stuff to know, and if you know this you will really be set apart. Im not sure if it will help you directly as a sys admin, but may quench your thirst. Im both a programmer and unix admin, so I tend to like both. I own or have owned most of these and enjoy them greatly. You may also consider renting them or just downloading them. I can say that knowing how thing operate internally is great, it fills in a lot of holes.

OS Internals

While you obviously are successful at the running and maintaining of unix like systems. How much do you know about their internal functions? While reading source code is the best method, some great books will save you many hours of time and will be a bit more enjoyable. These books are Amazing
The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System

Linux Kernel Development
Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment

Networking

Learning the actual function of networking at the code level is really interesting. Theres a whole other world below implementation. You likely know a lot of this.
Computer Networks

TCP/IP Illustrated, Vol. 1: The Protocols

Unix Network Programming, Volume 1: The Sockets Networking API

Compilers/Low Level computer Function

Knowing how a computer actually works, from electricity, to EE principles , through assembly to compilers may also interest you.
Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software

Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective

Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools

TCP/IP Illustrated by Stevens, a must read!

http://www.amazon.com/TCP-Illustrated-Vol-Addison-Wesley-Professional/dp/0201633469

I've been in IT for 18 years and info security for 15. This is the book that my manager plopped down on my desk and said "Read this. When you are done read it again. When you are done keep is near by and ready."

http://www.amazon.com/TCP-Illustrated-Vol-Addison-Wesley-Professional/dp/0201633469

I found that once I had a firm grasp of the underlying protocols I was able to figure out almost any new IP-based attacks, products, vendor claims, etc.

The great thing with computers is... There is no magic only stuff you haven't figured out yet. Order a copy of this.

FYI, both of your links lead to the same Comer book. I'll assume that your "ccnaguide" link was intended to link to either the CCENT/CCNA OCG by Wendell Odom, or Todd Lammle's CCNA guide as well.

Personally, I would choose to at least read through the CCENT/ICND1 OCG first. It tends to do a good job of introducing a beginner to the world of networking in general terms. You may even find it helpful to pursue the CCENT certification afterwards!

Then, if you're still interested in TCP/IP specifically, I would pick up the Comer book. There's also a few others you might be interested in: TCP/IP Network Administration, TCP/IP Illustrated, and maybe Cisco Press's Routing TCP/IP (although it might be a bit advanced for what you would want.)

TCP/IP Illustrated Volume 1 Edition 1, its the bible.

http://www.amazon.com/TCP-Illustrated-Vol-Addison-Wesley-Professional/dp/0201633469

Sure there are a lot more advanced books you need, but this one is a gem. ARP, bounce charts, tcp windows/zero windows, tcp half opens, etc,.

"TCP/IP Illustrated Vol 1: The Protocols" (pdf)(amazon).

from wikipedia:

> TCP/IP Illustrated is the name of a series of 3 books written by W. Richard Stevens. Unlike traditional books which explain the RFC specifications, Stevens goes into great detail using actual network traces to describe the protocol, hence its 'Illustrated' title.

> The first book in the series, "Volume 1: The Protocols", is cited by hundreds of technical papers in ACM journals.

Netsec is a pretty wide topic, which makes your question somewhat hard to answer. In all honesty, I think the best place to start right now for a high-level introduction to networking is this Wikipedia article. There are, of course, many books you can read for a deeper understanding; as well as the RFCs for a definitive explanation of every Internet standard.


Another recommendation would be to install Linux (try Ubuntu or Fedora), and just run it. Add users and groups, configure SSH and Apache, etc. Linux will come with several different programming languages (Perl, Python, bash), and you'll be able to install many more with very little effort.


Don't worry about having a formal background in computers, because that's not very important. Besides, no one can teach you the curiosity you'll need to get really deep into this stuff. Just expect to spend countless hours in front of a computer, and expect to never stop reading and learning.

The world of networking is huge. It's a marathon not a sprint. Huge repositories of information exist. Take your time to go through them.

Start with these -

https://www.amazon.com/TCP-Illustrated-Vol-Addison-Wesley-Professional/dp/0201633469

https://www.amazon.com/TCP-IP-Illustrated-Implementation-Vol/dp/020163354X

Use this to help supplement your studies -

https://www.amazon.com/Network-Warrior-Gary-Donahue/dp/1449387861/

As always Cisco has a ton of white papers -

http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en_us/about/security/intelligence/urpf.pdf

Free Presentations from Cisco Live -

https://www.ciscolive.com/online/connect/search.ww



If you wish to look at things from a different vendors perspective look into Juniper Day One -

http://www.juniper.net/us/en/training/jnbooks/day-one/

Finally RFCs are good place to get the nitty gritty of the protocols/standards -


OSPF

Long post ahead.

LEARN YOUR OSI LAYERS. Learn what's at Layer 2 (Ethernet), Layer 3 (IP), and Layer 4 (TCP/UDP/etc.)

I feel like throwing in the beej bible is necessary here (even if you never want to learn how to do network programming; it's still interesting, i.e. how the kernel opens a socket, translates network addresses, etc.): http://beej.us/guide/bgnet/. This is what I used in my Network Programming course 5+ years ago; still relevant today.

Then there's also the classic W. Richard Stevens tome: TCP/IP Illustrated: here. It's dated as fuck (telnet and rlogin were still prevalent and it still discusses classful routing (Class A, Class B, Class C) which hasn't been relevant for at least 20 years) though it does talk about CIDR which is current) but it's the most comprehensive explanation of how TCP/IP works there is. It does a GREAT job explaining how TCP and UDP work; TCP is a challenging protocol to really understand. It also goes into other application-layer protocols like DNS and HTTP but not in depth (and not relevant to the question at hand). It doesn't discuss IPv6 unfortunately (it's referred to as IPng, which is what it was called back in '94).

There's an updated version of this book that's been edited by a CCIE somewhere; I haven't been able to find it but it's quite good. I heard some of the edits are inaccurate, though.

Then there's the tcpdump manpage and tutorial to teach you how to inspect packets; you'll NEED to know how to do this. (Lots of folks like to use wireshark in the first instance but it's not on every box whereas tcpdump almost certainly is; the biggest differences lie in the filtering language)

More specific to #devopslife are software-defined "cloudy" routers like Neutron, Hyper-Vswitch (if on a Hyper-V virtualization backbone, I believe Azure uses them as well) and OpenVSwitch (from which Neutron descends). Neutron docs here.

Most CCNA material descends from these resources. CCNP and higher cover more specific details that you probably won't care too much about unless you really want to get into networking (which is a career in its own right, networking is HARD)

Unfortunately, if you spend a lot of time on cloud infrastructure, you won't deal with networking too much as an admin unless you get into tweaking kernel parameters or troubleshooting the (very) rare network-fucked-up occasion. Still good knowledge to have though.

You'll pass a Google SRE interview (in networking) if you read these; almost guaranteed.

TCP/IP Illustrated, Vol. 1: The Protocols

Yes it is very dated but still one of the best networking books ever published. This book got me started on my way to becoming a dual CCIE.

Edit: Just saw Disruptpwnt's post and didn't realize that it has been updated. I will have to go get a new copy!

If it's just Internet access you'll be supporting, don't worry. Most of your calls will be like 'My email is working, but my internet is down'. You might never have to learn what all those acronyms mean, but you'll become an expert in explaining the concept of double clicking. Yes, enterprise customers too (unless that ISP only caters to very large enterprises. You'll be having BOFH moments when explaining complex issues to customers and advising them to engage an consultant while suspecting you are talking to their consultant.

That said TCP/IP Illustrated, Vol. 1: The Protocols is an excellent start to expand your knowledge.