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That said, if you *do* want to learn to repair the car that is the global communications network, I recommend two textbooks:

- Forouzan "Data Communications and Networking" (5ed.) covers the underlying physics and engineering of *what actually happens on the wire and in the air*. It remains the only traditional textbook I kept from my CS degree.

- Hunt "TCP/IP Network Administration" (3ed.) covers the TCP/IP stack, a bunch of protocols thereupon, and how UNIX systems interact with those protocols. It is *not* up to date on the vast superstructure we have built (HTTP/2, QUIC, etc) but it does give a wonderful framework for understanding why things are the way they are on the network. (And it does cover IPv6.)