On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 1:48 AM, James Bensley <jwbensley@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi All,
What is the single best book you have read on networking? That's a wide topic so to clarify I'm talking about service provider networking but I do enjoy all aspects really and don't want to limit my self to one area of networking.
I'm often reading technical books about technology X or protocol Y but they are generally explaining a new technology to me, how it works and how to use it (and how to configure it if its a book by a vendor like Juniper or Cisco). That is usually a learning exercise though required for an upcoming project or deliverable.
I haven't read many vendor neutral books recently that explained concepts, or technologies, or paradigms that I found profound, radical and extremely useful.
I feel like I'm just reading networking books these days to learn a new technology for a period of time (until a project completes) then moving on to the next technology (book). Longevity of the information doesn't seem as profound as it used to; BGP design principals will stay with me for decades until we reach the need for BGP v5 or similar, learning about 8b/10b encoding was interesting but not really required for my line of work more out of hobbyist interest and serves no practical purpose as a network engineer.
Cheers, James.
I recommend reading the NANOG meeting materials archive presos and videos. Good to see what people are actually doing, real lessons learned. CB