Every time I start doing some network packet-based troubleshooting, for example firing up tcpdump to debug a tcp window size improperly tuned that caused a performance degradation over a high latency link (this is a random example I did last week), coworkers look at me like I pulled off some sort of wizardry. I feel it’s knowledge that most SWEs working on distributed systems should have acquired early and routinely use, but clearly that’s not the case.