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This is an awesome read and hilarious if you have any historical knowledge of networking. +1 highly recommend even if all you want is a few chuckles. Well don

This is an awesome read and hilarious if you have any historical knowledge of networking. +1 highly recommend even if all you want is a few chuckles. Well done.

luckydude 9y ago
BTW, the best read in networking is "The Elements of Networking Style" by Mike Padlipsky. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_A._Padlipsky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_A._Padlipsky It's hard to find a copy of that book but oh, man, if you know the stack and you lived through the ISO/OSI proposals, it's so so good. I got lucky and read that book after I had ported Lachman's streams based networking stack into the ETA-10 and SCO's Unix. I didn't know what I was doing but I had to get the job done, I was just dealing with shorts that weren't 16 bits, stuff like that. So I was a grunt thrashing around. At some point I wanted to know more about I was doing, I still have a notebook where I wrote down every packet format, all the IP stuff, TCP stuff, UDP stuff, ARP stuff, etc. Shout out to Masscomp because I was a sys admin on their machines in college and they had a great intro to networking that formed the basis of my limited understanding of networking. It was Padlipsky's book that brought the whole thing into focus. I dunno if you guys have had that clarity problem, I had it again when I went to Sun and was working on the kernel, had no idea what I was doing, thrashed about, and slowly, slowly, the architecture of what Sun had done came into focus. It was amazing to me when I got it. It took a lot of time just looking, reading the code, trying to see the picture. Padlipsky's book made me get networking long before I came to Sun, I was a n00b at everything and he made me get it. And it was funny as heck. "Do you want protocols that look nice or work nice?" "If you know what you are doing 3 layers are enough, if you don't 7 aren't" His book was full of that stuff and it made you get the stack. If you are into the network stack, and especially if you are trying to figure it out, get that book. In fact, if you contact me and say "that's me but I'm broke", I'll see if I can find a copy on ebay or some place and send it to you. That book rocks.
- luckydude 9y ago
  If HN doesn't upvote this to the stars, you suck. It is the essence of what HN likes, it's great tech presented well. Go find that book, go read about Mike, come on people, dig a little. I don't care about the upvotes, I care that you go read. And read something that will help you see. Maybe this thread is dead and I need to do a top level post about Mike.
  - luckydude 9y ago
    Sigh, I think I screwed up this by being stupid. I still think that this is in the HN wheelhouse but I didn't help with my comments. My bad. Please go read the book.

This is an awesome read and hilarious if you have any historical knowledge of networking. +1 highly recommend even if all you want is a few chuckles. Well done.

luckydude 9y ago

BTW, the best read in networking is "The Elements of Networking Style" by Mike Padlipsky. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_A._Padlipsky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_A._Padlipsky It's hard to find a copy of that book but oh, man, if you know the stack and you lived through the ISO/OSI proposals, it's so so good. I got lucky and read that book after I had ported Lachman's streams based networking stack into the ETA-10 and SCO's Unix. I didn't know what I was doing but I had to get the job done, I was just dealing with shorts that weren't 16 bits, stuff like that. So I was a grunt thrashing around. At some point I wanted to know more about I was doing, I still have a notebook where I wrote down every packet format, all the IP stuff, TCP stuff, UDP stuff, ARP stuff, etc. Shout out to Masscomp because I was a sys admin on their machines in college and they had a great intro to networking that formed the basis of my limited understanding of networking. It was Padlipsky's book that brought the whole thing into focus. I dunno if you guys have had that clarity problem, I had it again when I went to Sun and was working on the kernel, had no idea what I was doing, thrashed about, and slowly, slowly, the architecture of what Sun had done came into focus. It was amazing to me when I got it. It took a lot of time just looking, reading the code, trying to see the picture. Padlipsky's book made me get networking long before I came to Sun, I was a n00b at everything and he made me get it. And it was funny as heck. "Do you want protocols that look nice or work nice?" "If you know what you are doing 3 layers are enough, if you don't 7 aren't" His book was full of that stuff and it made you get the stack. If you are into the network stack, and especially if you are trying to figure it out, get that book. In fact, if you contact me and say "that's me but I'm broke", I'll see if I can find a copy on ebay or some place and send it to you. That book rocks.

luckydude 9y ago
If HN doesn't upvote this to the stars, you suck. It is the essence of what HN likes, it's great tech presented well. Go find that book, go read about Mike, come on people, dig a little. I don't care about the upvotes, I care that you go read. And read something that will help you see. Maybe this thread is dead and I need to do a top level post about Mike.
- luckydude 9y ago
  Sigh, I think I screwed up this by being stupid. I still think that this is in the HN wheelhouse but I didn't help with my comments. My bad. Please go read the book.