Networking and the Internet, from First Principles

wojciii

I hate everything that uses ".. from first principles" with a passion. Almost as much as "technically true".

WhrRTheBaboons

i hope this was vibe coded, because I'd hate to think that tiny dark-gray text on a black background was a conscious choice

leoc

The very first substantial order for the Digital PDP-1 was for use in ITT’s torn-tape messaging operation! https://www.eejournal.com/article/gordon-bell-1934-2024-gran...

Fraterkes

There's 2 [dead] fairly anodyne comments here. Are they bots? And if so, how can people tell?

mercutio2

Wow. The reactions here. So negative! I skimmed various sections. I found the animations pleasant, the text readable, and the content clearly not slop. The historical context of the telegraph was interesting, and the treatment of bandwidth vs. latency was thoughtful. I think it’s too long; I don’t think many people who don’t already know most of this material will read it, but I enjoyed the parts I read. Nice work!

sarchertech

I started something similar in 2021 while on paternity leave with my first kid. I got about half way through, then I had 2 more kids. Then AI happened, and I started questioning the whether there was too much slop out there to bother writing a book. I’ll still probably finish it when the new baby is a little older. https://www.networksfromscratch.com/

sudb

I found this article very well written, as a comparison https://explained-from-first-principles.com/internet/

jdw64

I don't understand. Even if this post is long and has some repetitive parts, isn't it still written by a human? There are way too many comments acting like everything is bad just because one animation widget was made with AI. I actually like this post. It looks good, the explanations are clear, and the AI-generated animation widget actually helps me understand things. What's the problem exactly? Is using AI for visualization considered a bad practice?

Vivek-KY

so well written ,appreciate it

rkoten

Very well written and presented, thank you! Reminds me of Bartosz Ciechanowski's works: https://ciechanow.ski If I may ask, what stack do you use for the inline interactive elements and would you choose anything different after having done it this way?

nicpottier

Weird comments on this. I found the writing to be excellent. The animations are a bit small and associated text even smaller on mobile but this doesn't read as AI slop to me at all. Anything that makes technology more accessible and understandable is a win in my book so kudos for doing it.

mlhpdx

I know the guidelines make this a faux pas but I’m just here to say that was a great read. Very informative, well structured and compelling story of how we have networks and how they work. To those saying it’s the work of an LLM: if it is I don’t care. It’s good.

vivzkestrel

- added to my list of stier blogs - for a blog to qualify as stier, it must animations and visualizations to explain the idea in a way that even a 5 yr old can understand - a tier is information heavy like authentic guides from betterstack - everything else goes below b tier - one day i ll share my list of 10000 blogs on hackernews, it ll blow the people s mind as i have been doing this for a while now

matt_daemon

It’s become somewhat of a HN “flex” to call something out as AI slop, and it almost always comes across as preachy and just plain wrong

Denzel

Writing out my nod of appreciation to counterbalance some of the negativity. I do enjoy the effort and thought you into this essay. I didn’t read the whole thing, just a few sections from the beginning, and I think you do a great job explaining how these concepts evolved from simple beginnings. You’ve condensed down a lot of concepts I learned through research and trial-and-error over my career as a SWE. Thank you for sharing Faza. Please continue putting in the effort and sharing these essays!

Fraterkes

I think it's perfectly possible that substance-wise this article was entirely written by the author, but comparing the style of the article to the style of the author's comments, I'm personally pretty sure the text has been significantly edited (cleaned up if you like) by ai. Is that bad? Maybe not! But it's unfair to tar the people here pointing it out as paranoid.

dtj1123

Activating aeroplane mode after loading the page prevents any animations that weren't in view beforehand from playing... Weird

smalltorch

Not sure what all the hate is about. Very informative, interesting, and enjoyable to read and learn.