OSI model, IPv4 and IPv6 addressing, subnetting, routing protocols, TCP connection management, UDP, TLS, and reading packet captures with Wireshark. The deep-dive networking course for engineers who want to understand what's actually happening on the wire.
This is a text-first course that links out to the best supporting material on the internet instead of trying to replace it. The goal is to make this the best course on tcp ip you can find — even without producing a single minute of custom video.
This course is built by engineers who ship tcp ip systems in production. It reflects how these tools actually behave at scale.
Every day includes working code examples you can copy, run, and modify right now. Understanding comes through doing.
Instead of re-explaining existing documentation, this course links to the definitive open-source implementations and the best reference material on tcp ip available.
Each day is designed for about an hour of focused reading plus hands-on work. Do the whole course over a week of lunch breaks. No live classes, no quizzes.
Each day stands alone. Read them in order for the full picture, or jump straight to the day that answers the question you have today.
The seven-layer model, why it's useful for debugging, physical media (Ethernet, fiber, Wi-Fi), MAC addresses, ARP resolution, and how a frame travels from one machine to another on the same subnet.
IPv4 address classes, CIDR notation, subnet masks, calculating network/host ranges, IPv6 addressing format, NAT, and the DHCP lease cycle that assigns IPs automatically.
Static vs dynamic routing, RIP/OSPF/BGP overview, the longest-prefix match, routing tables, traceroute output interpretation, and how traffic finds its way across the internet.
SYN/SYN-ACK/ACK sequence, sequence numbers, ACKs, retransmission, flow control (receiver window), congestion control (CWND, slow start, AIMD), and TIME_WAIT — the mechanism that trips up high-connection-rate servers.
UDP's tradeoffs vs TCP, QUIC over UDP, the TLS handshake sequence, certificate verification, cipher suites, and a hands-on Wireshark session analyzing a real HTTPS connection from SYN to TLS handshake to HTTP/2 stream.
Instead of shooting our own videos, we link to the best deep-dives already on YouTube. Watch them alongside the course. All external, all free, all from builders who ship this stuff.
Complete TCP/IP tutorials — addressing, the connection lifecycle, and how data travels across networks.
Capturing and analyzing network traffic with Wireshark — TCP handshakes, TLS, HTTP, and DNS in real packet captures.
IPv4 subnetting, CIDR notation, calculating network ranges, and IPv6 address format — with worked examples.
Slow start, congestion avoidance, AIMD, and how TCP backs off when it detects packet loss — the mechanism behind fair bandwidth sharing.
The TLS 1.3 handshake — key exchange, certificate verification, and cipher suite negotiation — visualized step by step.
The best way to deepen understanding is to read the canonical open-source implementations. Clone them, trace the code, understand how the concepts in this course get applied in production.
Build a DNS resolver from scratch to understand the resolution chain. The best hands-on introduction to how DNS actually works.
The Wireshark source. The /epan/dissectors directory has protocol dissectors for every protocol covered in this course.
Cloudflare's QUIC implementation in Rust. Reading the source shows how QUIC achieves 0-RTT connections and multiplexing over UDP.
Curated networking resources for developers — protocol RFCs, packet captures, tools, and learning materials.
Timeout errors, connection resets, and TLS failures all have network-layer causes. This course gives you the vocabulary and tools to diagnose them.
Understanding TCP/IP at the packet level is prerequisite knowledge for network security work — firewalls, IDS, packet filtering, and protocol exploitation all require it.
VPCs, security groups, and load balancers are all built on TCP/IP fundamentals. This course fills the gap between cloud console clicking and understanding what's actually happening.
The 2-day in-person Precision AI Academy bootcamp covers networking and infrastructure in depth — hands-on, with practitioners who build AI systems for a living. 5 U.S. cities. $1,490. 40 seats max. June–October 2026 (Thu–Fri).
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