standards

This book is the best book anyone can get for learning TCP/IP. A few of the chapters might put you too sleep, but the technical context and the way it is explained is far beyond all other books on this topic. The only other series of books I have read that might compare are TCP/IP illustrated by Stevens.

To learn about TCP-IP there are three aspects you should consider: TCP-IP standards, TCP-IP implementation and TCP-IP programming.

Are you looking for a good intro about TCP-IP Standards? This is surely the best. This book isn't about TCP-IP programming or implementation; I would say that it is an organized, gentle and concise presentation of the Internet documentation known as RFC ( request for comments ). After reading this book you should try "TCP-IP Illustrated, Vol. 1" by Richard Stevens, because it offers a more practical approach describing a real TCP-IP Internet "on the fly". After these two books you have a good background to read the Internet RFCs and more specific books about routing, firewalls, proxys, Internet high-level protocols and applications ( http, ftp, telnet, smtp, pop, etc ... ).

After the basics you should read a book about a particular implementation of TCP-IP for the OS you are using. A nice intro about TCP-IP for Unix is "TCP-IP Network Administration" by Craig Hunt. Three other O'Reilly's books about specific topics on TCP-IP Administration for Unix are "DNS and Bind" , "Sendmail" and "Managing NFS and NIS".

If you are interested in Unix TCP-IP programming there is still a quite long way, because you should know "C" language, basic Unix programing and Unix network programming. For this herculean task, I highly recommend "Advanced Programming in Unix Environment" by Richard Stevens for basic Unix programming and "Unix Network Programming Vol. 1" also by Richard Stevens for TCP-IP programming. These are the best books on basic and network programming for Unix OS.

By the way, You don't need the Volumes 2 and 3 of this book. This Volume 1 is the only one you should buy.

I am normally too lazy to write reviews of books that I have read. But this one is different. I truly wants to give credit to the author in whatever way I can. And then I realized I should go to amazon.com and write a review about it if possible. So here I am. If you read same stuff elsewhere (e.g internet articles, other popular books even Stevens ! etc) my experience is they tend to make things a little more complex then they are. Douglas, tells you things that you want to know directly and in simple easy terms.

And he continue to answer all relevent questions that comes to your mind while reading. This way you feel comfortable that yes you have grabbed the crux of the knowledge and feel confident about it.