Hehe - I did end up reading all 3, and enjoyed them all, but I'd say I got 90% of the value from volume 1. Volume 2 walks through the BSD implementation of TCP/IP, which is fascinating, but way more detail than you'd ever need to know, and volume 3 goes off into some esoteric topics that seemed promising at the time but mostly ended up being abandoned (along with a brief discussion of HTTP as it was around the 90's).

If you're going to read it, though, find a used copy of the original Stevens' first edition, not that terrible desecrated second edition.

Just read the first one- it reads more like a novel than a textbook IMHO, though I may be biased- I have always been fascinated by networks and when I was coming of age this was the "high tech" of the time- I used to read RFCs for fun (I highly recommend this as well if you want to dig a little deeper- Jon Postel's are great reads).

This is one of the best written textbooks, if not the best, I have ever read.

No. They are huge because they are highly detailed and nitpicky. I suggest the following for understanding Networking and TCP/IP;

* An Engineering Approach to Computer Networking: ATM Networks, the Internet, and the Telephone Network by S.Keshav

* TCP/IP Illustrated Vol -I by Richard Stevens (any edition will do).

* Effective TCP/IP programming by Jon Snader.

Depressing, isn't it? There are so many books that I probably should read about almost any number of topics that, in my work, I "touch on".

Not OP but the first volume is the one that's cited frequently and the only one of the series I believe to have a second edition.