Ryan’s Reviews > Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach > Status Update

The section on TCP kicked my ass. The confusion stems from how the relationship between Seq and ACK is described. Basically, a client/server will initiate a 3 way handshake, and both flags are set to 1. From here, client req's data and the server ACKs it. The payload is then sent to the client, which sends back an ACK that = payload+1. Server then sends next data block (seq=next segment in sequence,ack=orig payload).

Completing the q's (over 50 questions)/labs now. I may need to re-read certain parts, because the application level involves a lot of pieces and I took ages to finish this chapter.

Lots and lots of information on DNS, only some of which I was familiar with. There are other complexities like load distribution and the way in which DNS works with CDNs that I wasn't familiar with, which make me glad that I read this slowly. There are tons of questions I have, and I think I'll be watching a handful of Youtube tuts and doing experiments in Wireshark to make sense of it all.

Figured I'd learn more about networking while I'm at home. :) This book is as described: it drills down into each layer of the TCP/IP model, explaining each layer's purpose and how each layer interacts together, in a top down fashion. This has tons of hands on labs at the end of each chapter, which I'm actually looking forward to doing.