How to use this reference
- Work through topics top to bottom — HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 assume TCP and TLS; CDN caching assumes HTTP headers from earlier topics.
- Each subtopic is a brief overview plus 2–4 hand-picked readings — one Kurose section and one practitioner article where possible. Read for interview fluency, not cover-to-cover.
- Optional hands-on tasks use curl, dig, and openssl — the tools you should be able to describe in a verbal round.
- This track is sized for interview ROI: if a topic rarely appears in senior loops (ARP internals, epoll tuning, Jaeger architecture), it's not here. Continue with Communication & Data Transfer for application-layer APIs, RPC, and bulk transfer patterns.
The Reference
- 1
The layered mental model and end-to-end request path every other topic builds on.
- 2
Ports, reliability, and the congestion behavior behind every API call.
- 3
How hostnames become IPs — and why resolution failures look like "the service is down."
- 4
Encrypting the wire — handshakes, certificates, and the trade-offs interviewers still ask about.
- 5
How the application layer chased lower latency — and why each version still matters in interviews.
- 6
How traffic reaches your service — and how edge caching shapes latency.
- 7
The minimum command-line fluency for verbal rounds and live troubleshooting.