Review: Introduction to Networking: How the Internet Works

Cover of Intro to Networking

By Christopher Williams

Introduction to Networking: How the Internet Works is a long title for a short book but that short book is a sharp read.

Introduction to Networking: How the Internet Works by Charles Russell Severance is an 84 page book that details simply about how the internet works. He first describes each of four layers and then goes into further details about those four layers of the internet such as the link layer, how your computer connects to a router. He also talks about the protocols that are used for networks like HTTPS or how your router finds the best connection from itself to its destination. As a nice little treat, each chapter also has a glossary to help explain the jargon and a little quiz you can use to test how well you understood the material.

The material is not very complex and is really meant to explain the concepts of the internet, not how to make or run the internet. It does this job brilliantly by showing just enough to see a clear outline of the topic but never gets bogged down in details that would make it a slog to read. The book also has a good structure generally but it does repeat itself by going into a bit too much detail on the first chapter, an overview of all the layers of the internet, and then repeats that intro in the introduction for the detailed chapter on that layer. I liked the glossary but I didn't use it much because the writing was detailed enough to understand what it was, though it did usually added a few more details. The quizzes were a nice feature and while were usually easy to answer, they did occasionally take me off guard if I did not think something completely through and did me help more fully understand the concepts. The one issue I did have with the quizzes though, is that the answers are not in the book but instead you have to take the quiz on the website to find out the answer.

Overall, I highly recommend this book if you have a curiosity to learn about the internet so it is no longer a magic ether that just works but you don't necessarily want to become a wizard that makes that ether do things for you. It is a quick, pleasant read that also gracefully enough ranges from pretty cheap to literally free since it is also an open source book provided by the author.

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