How to understand network protocols?

Question

I work in web development, but I don\'t have a great understanding of network protocols. I recall hearing an analogy that TCP, HTTP, and SSL can be thought of as a series of

Answer 1

Is there a beginner-friendly book or other resource that you'd recommend?

Data Communications and Networking by Behrouz Forouzan:

This contains introductory material and the explanation is beginner friendly. At the same time, it is not dumbed down and the material gets a bit more challenging as you go on. There are very good diagrams explaining concepts too. The typesetting is awesome and you'll have lots of interesting tips surrounding the content. The chapters are ordered according to the OSI stack as mentioned in other answers here. But a lot of the math and derivations for formulas for protocol efficiencies aren't explained.

Computer Networks by Andrew S. Tanenbaum

Everything found in Behrouz Forouzan + lots of equations.

My recommendation is to read the first book first and if you are particularly curious about the math, go to the second one.