Almost all software engineers would benefit from a basic understanding of networking. Most networking books are in-depth and intimidating, especially the ones that get into the nuts and bolts of packet formats. This book on the other hand provides exactly what most software engineers need to know.
>Klathmon: take a look at the book linked at the bottom of that page which includes a pretty comprehensive section on improving RTT and TLS speeds in general
This book is really amazing, covers basics of 3/4/5G networking as well. I would say this book is mandatory reading for all engineers who deal with networking. It also covers enough in HTTP that you can get by without reading the entire spec.
If I were designing a course I would put the book near the beginning.
I can not recommend reading this book enough. I learned an insane amount.
I find myself using what I learned several times a week. Simply having a slightly more in depth understanding of some parts of networking benfited my thought process hugely when it came to working on problems in that area.
What are the things I should look out (and around) for when I'm reading this (for example, specs that have changed drastically since this book was written, etc.)?
Almost all software engineers would benefit from a basic understanding of networking. Most networking books are in-depth and intimidating, especially the ones that get into the nuts and bolts of packet formats. This book on the other hand provides exactly what most software engineers need to know.
It costs nothing to try it either.