bzs@BU-CS.BU.EDU.UUCP (02/22/87)
Every so often someone asks for some starting material on Internetworking, I get asked a lot personally around the University here (esp my students!) Unfortunately there are several views: How to set up and administer, how to build one, how to use one, how to get a theoretical and comparative grasp (eg. a person researching network modeling.) I don't think there exists any one source for all needs, and not any real source for some needs. I suggested two just now on this list and got some flak about one, but none of the flak'ers suggested something better (does that leave Padlipsky's book as the only source in the world on understanding TCP? I don't think even he would be comfortable with that, as much as we both like the book.) I am not sure why people find the RFCs an uncomfortable place to start, I assume it is because they (the RFCs) assume you have some view of the networking milieu (eg. that you intend to build a stream interface on a packet oriented network, that's not obvious to a novitiate.) In order to understand a solution a person has to understand the problem it claims to solve. This can be elusive. Perhaps, given the relatively recent explosion of TCP/IP (et al) based networks a new list might be called for aimed at more general questions, similar to the difference between UNIX-WIZARDS (which is more like this list) and INFO-UNIX (which might be a new list, INFO-TCP?) If such a list exists it's interesting that I've never seen it mentioned here, I'll assume it doesn't exist, I don't see anything in interest-groups. I don't have the time to organize such a list, nor is it clear I would be the right person to moderate (if moderation is needed), but perhaps someone with an interest would step forward. -Barry Shein, Boston University
gds@SPAM.ISTC.SRI.COM.UUCP (02/23/87)
The trick to learning the Internet protocols (for me at least) was knowing where to look for things. I found these sources to be valuable for different things. * RFCs -- for the protocol definition or guidelines to protocol implementors * The networking portions of the operating system documentation -- for general overviews of how the protocols fit into the operating system * Books -- better explanations of the protocols than RFCs, plus examples (Tanenbaum comes to mind, but since the book predates the current Internet setup a lot of information isn't there, like TCP, EGP, etc.) * The source code -- when the documentation isn't enough, or something is broken * A guru -- when I can't figure out how to do it myself * This list -- when I and the guru can't figure out how to do it ourselves, or there is no guru * Conferences -- for sharing information in person, and hearing what the gurus have to say Perhaps some ambitious person with a lot of time on their hands could write a series of books encompassing all this information. Fundamental Protocols, anyone? :-) --gregbo