Member Avatar for silvercats

If I want to understand how does internet work,all about networking and network security,whichbooks are best to read?please refer me to good books only.
thank you

  • 4 Contributors
  • 5 Replies
  • 248 Views
  • 2 Days Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by jbennet

Dani AI

Generated

For a straight two-book answer to : pick one deep protocol reference and one hands-on security/operations book. My recommendations are:

  • "TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1: The Protocols" (W. Richard Stevens) — a packet-level, example-driven walk through how IP, TCP, UDP, and the basics actually behave on the wire. Read chapters, then reproduce the traces with a packet capture tool to make the theory stick.
  • "The Practice of Network Security Monitoring" (Richard Bejtlich) — focuses on what to collect, how to analyze traffic, how to build simple detection workflows, and how to turn raw packets into actionable incident timelines.

How to use those two together: read a short section in the Stevens book, immediately capture the same behavior in your lab and follow the bytes in Wireshark. Once you can read a TCP handshake and basic packet flags, use Bejtlich’s approach to hunt for anomalies, triage alerts, and build a habit of mapping alerts back to packets and timestamps.

Quick, practical learning plan you can apply now:

  1. Create two VMs in VirtualBox (internal network).
  2. Run a simple web server on one VM, generate traffic from the other, and capture with Wireshark. Identify the 3-way handshake, sequence numbers, and TCP options.
  3. Install an IDS (Snort or Suricata) on a third VM, enable a few rules, and observe alerts tied to the packets you captured.
  4. Repeat with encrypted traffic and DNS, then practice writing a short incident timeline from logs + PCAPs.

A few final notes: as and pointed out, a solid theory book is invaluable; as suggested, practical guides help too. Hands-on labs are essential. Always run security tests only on systems and networks you own or have explicit permission to test.

Recommended Answers

All 5 Replies

Member Avatar for rch1231

OReilly makes the best books on just about any computer topic.

O'Reilly - Designing Large-Scale LANs
O'Reilly - Network Security Assessment 2nd Edition Nov 2007
O'Reilly - TCP IP Network Administration
O'Reilly - Internet Core Protocols The Definitive Guide
O'Reilly - TCP IP Network Administration 3rd Edition
O'Reilly - The Network Administration Guide

And more.....

Member Avatar for silvercats

omg.Can anyone suggest me only about two books?like 1 book for tcp/ip one for security ? :/

Member Avatar for nuwan4u

Computer Networks (4th Edition ) by Andrew S. Tanenbaum, ISBN-10: 0130661023 is a good Advance Book for Networking,

Network Security Fundamentals, ISBN-10: 1587051672 is a Good Network Security Book from CISCO.

TCP/IP for Dummies, ISBN-10: 0470450606

Member Avatar for silvercats

Thanks Nuwan!niyamai!

Member Avatar for jbennet

Agreed, Tannenbaum's books are best. Boring, but good. Its a course textbook for me,

Ive got third edition. The newest (5th?) edition covers wifi and stuff, gets rid of some obsolete stuff

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.