7 Best Books and Courses to Learn Computer Networking, TCP/IP and UDP Protocols

2. TCP/IP Illustrated

This is a three-book series on TCP/IP protocol by W. Richard Stevens. So far, I have read TCP/IP Illustrated Vol. 1: The Protocols and TCP/IP Illustrated Vol.2: The Implementation.

This series is probably the only series of books you need to fully understand how TCP/IP protocol works internally. It is also the most comprehensive guide of TCP/IP protocol.

All the basics like why TCP/IP is a connection-oriented protocol? what do mean by being reliable and ordered, what is a 3-way handshake, and how TCP ensures delivery of messages is nicely covered in this book.

Some of you may find it a little bit boring like Introduction to Algorithms but once you started understanding, you will appreciate this book. I often use this book as a reference book.

As I said this is a 3 book series, where volume 1 is focused on Protocol and volume 2 is focused on the implementation of TCP/IP and the third and final book covers TCP for the transaction by explaining HTTP, the most used protocol based on TCP, NNTP and UNIX domain protocols

If you need an online course for some active learning, you can also check Learn TCP/IP — Computer Networking Fundamentals course by Mark Nielsen on Udemy. It nicely complements this book by squeezing necessary information into a 2-hour course.

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3. Internetworking with TCP/IP

This is another great book to learn TCP/IP, UDP, and other computer networking protocols. It is also one of the most recommended books to learn TCP/IP and computer networking basics.

This is required reading for many courses on computer networking all around the world.

Some of you find it boring if you read it on isolation but if you are doing a course on computer networking, Internetworking with TCP/IP Volume One (6th Edition) by Douglas E. Comer can be a great textbook.

5. The TCP/IP Guide: A Comprehensive, Illustrated Internet Protocols Reference

This is my favorite and probably the best book to learn TCP/IP in detail. Even before reading this book, I was familiar with TCP and UDP in my work but the amount of detail given in this book just dwarf my knowledge. It feels that I only knew about 1% of TCP/IP before reading this book.

The best part of this book is the illustrations and diagrams which make it really easy to understand the inner working of TCP/IP protocol.

I have a hard copy of The TCP/IP Guide: A Comprehensive, Illustrated Internet Protocols Reference 1st Edition by Charles M. Kozierok (Author) in my library and eBook on my smartphone and whenever I need to learn anything about TCP/IP, UDP, or other essential computer networking protocol like ICMP, I refer this book.

It is useful for both professionals working in IT and Computer networking and students doing graduation and masters on computer network courses around the world.