All the books are great recommendations, except for Computer Networking (Kurose & Ross). That was the textbook we used when I was in grad school, and it was terrible. The best book on networking I’ve ever read was TCP/IP illustrated - it’s a bit out-of-date, but once you read it, you’ll understand the core networking concepts well enough to figure out the current state of modern computer networks.
I found it to be too academic, too high-level - and too top down! I had already read TCP/IP illustrated before I took the class, so I had no trouble intuiting what the authors were trying to say, but I was in class with a lot of people who had no real exposure to network concepts outside of surfing the web, and they were all horribly confused by the abstraction in the book. I wouldn’t even say it’s worth coming back to after you’ve read a better networking book: I didn’t learn anything from it that I didn’t already know.
On the other hand I would say, I learned a lot from this book. I too had no exposure to network concepts but after finishing half the book I learned a lot.
Comments
All the books are great recommendations, except for Computer Networking (Kurose & Ross). That was the textbook we used when I was in grad school, and it was terrible. The best book on networking I’ve ever read was TCP/IP illustrated - it’s a bit out-of-date, but once you read it, you’ll understand the core networking concepts well enough to figure out the current state of modern computer networks.
You said it's terrible but did not state why!
I found it to be too academic, too high-level - and too top down! I had already read TCP/IP illustrated before I took the class, so I had no trouble intuiting what the authors were trying to say, but I was in class with a lot of people who had no real exposure to network concepts outside of surfing the web, and they were all horribly confused by the abstraction in the book. I wouldn’t even say it’s worth coming back to after you’ve read a better networking book: I didn’t learn anything from it that I didn’t already know.
On the other hand I would say, I learned a lot from this book. I too had no exposure to network concepts but after finishing half the book I learned a lot.