Networking and the Internet, from First Principles | Hacker News Reader

Networking and the Internet, from First Principles

fazamhd.com

208 pointsfaza70 comments

I found this article very well written, as a comparison

https://explained-from-first-principles.com/internet/

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.

That first animation should include the servers hosting the messaging platform. Or use a peer to peer application for that example.

It does include the app's data center

> To those saying it’s the work of an LLM: if it is I don’t care. It’s good.

It hit me when I woke up and I made a (human) haiku (well, sorta) about it:

"We already had Klingon and Elvish. Now we have LLMish."

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?

> What's the problem exactly? Is using AI for visualization considered a bad practice?

Some people just assume that anything "AI" has touched is automatically "slop" because ... AI! Probably at least partly due to how much actual "AI slop" is out there produced by people "holding the tool wrong". When used judiciously and properly, some of these language models can really be a useful tool and help create some quality stuff, but they're no substitute for a knowledgable human using the tool correctly to achieve the desired result (which is why so many people who misuse it to do all their thinking and work for them (without doing any of their part) inevitably produce the typical "slop" result).

Yes, when someone takes advice from a tool with a proven reputation of outputting lies and embellishments, with zero fact checking of its training data, and encourages people to use it almost no matter what, the sane and rational thing is to assume it is slop.

Aren't you just treating people like they're too stupid? You can't catch every hallucination from AI, but there are still things you can spot. I'm a programmer too—I can tell the difference to some extent.

Honestly, I think formalism is strange. People also exaggerate and spread false information. Even famous programmers on Hacker News sometimes give incorrect programming advice. In the end, there's always some amount of misinformation in any source. You read it while cross-checking with your own knowledge. Saying that all of it is useless is just an emotional response.

Is 'rational' really about insulting others? Reason seems pretty cheap these days. Then I'll just be an emotional person

> In the end, there's always [at least the potential for] some amount of misinformation in any source. You read it while cross-checking with your own knowledge [and the knowledge gathered by others].

I wish they still taught this in grade-school like they did when I was a kid. Clearly research skills are not so common these days. "Common sense" is not common.

I agree.

As someone who spends their own time developing open-educational resources (OER), I was extremely limited in what I could do pre-AI. Now, AI has supercharged my ability to elevate my work in ways I could have never done before, particularly in visualizations, interactive widgets, and even images (often SVG for me), all of which are necessary components to the resources I've been developing online since 2020 (COVID-era).

Given that my programming abilities are very limited as well as my time, AI has allowed me to develop the missing pieces to much of what I was creating. When used properly (as an expert in a field using AI as a tool), the end product can be completely transformed and elevated in ways that could never have been. I am so thankful that AI came along just at the right time for me to do the things I could have never accomplished before.

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...

Thanks for sharing. I hadn't read about this.

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.

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!

Thanks. Glad you liked it. That was my intention with these articles. To explain how most of the things which we take for granted evolved. Even I was able to learn so many new things and find gaps in my own understanding while writing it. I am only doing it because I felt other content on these concepts either just focused on the technicals completely or dumbed down the concepts too much so everyone could follow easily. This is just my attempt at explaining things in detail without making it hard to follow. Initially I had no plans of using any simulations, i was just thinking explaining things with just my writing and some diagrams, but I saw how I can explain things much better with a simulation.

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?

Thanks. Glad you liked it.

I had no plans for inline interactive elements when I started out. It was just a plain static site using Astro, with my content in markdown files.

When I thought of including interactive elements, I saw that Astro supported MDX, which lets you embed custom JavaScript components. At the start I was just using plain JavaScript, SVG, and CSS transitions to do the animations, but as the simulations became more complex, I started using React to manage state better.

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

I have a feeling that on HN in general most if not all of the blog posts are mostly AI, and quite a bunch of comments as well. But that has always been an element of anon internet usage :-)

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!

Thanks. I am glad you liked it. I just wanted to help everyone understand the concepts in detail. I felt the existing materials were either way too textbook like or very high level. This is just my attempt at explaining things in a more interesting way.

Being dismissive is one way to think yourself "better" than others. But on HN hastier reactions tend to be outright negative or out of context with long articles, as eyeballs actually evaluating the content will take some time before providing constructive criticism.

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

Hi, author here. Thanks for reporting this. Simulations were only downloaded when it scrolled into view. I deployed the change to download all simulations on page load and only play them when it scrolled into view.

Thanks, my next short-haul flight will be considerably improved

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

Thanks. Glad you liked it. This was my intention. Just trying my best to explain things I understand in a very clear and interesting way.

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/

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

It seems that author didn’t check vibe coded result. Mobile version has tiny text even even smaller… :)

At HN, there should be some tag explaining the project is vibe coded.

Hi, author here. Sorry for the bad experience. I'll put more effort on the design and reading experience

Issue is LLM itself. For design and typography it needs precise instructions otherwise you get output that it is information-heavy but churn rate is high as ppl can’t use (read) it.

I have to control output everytime but after 25 years in magazine layout I know what has to be controlled.

Tailwindcss has typography plugin named prose. And shadcn/ui recently published typeset package as well.

Emilkowalski/skills is good too.

Just add something more specific into prompt and the result will be much better. Cheers.

Hi, thanks a lot for your suggestions. Design is one area where i would like to improve.

The text is also pretty clearly AI-generated. I guess there's now a market for "I asked an LLM so that you don't have to", but the funny thing is that it's such a wall of text that no one upvoting it will have actually read it. So it's vibe-writing, vibe-coding, and vibe-reading. Full end-to-end synergy.

Hi, author here. Sorry, you felt that way. I did put lot of effort in communicating my understanding, and used Claude only for review and visualizations.

I'd suggest splitting the content out into clearly defined sections, lead by the visuals.

Put the visualization and a short explainer, then have additional content show up if the reader drills in.

I don't think there is anything wrong with the content being run through an LLM. Networking is crazy complicated.

Thanks for your feedback. I'll try to do that.

Oh come on. Just seven days before this 60-page essay, you apparently cranked out another 40-page one:

https://fazamhd.com/mental-models/software/

That's 100+ pages of in-depth technical writing in a matter of days. Amazing, really amazing. Also, not something that a human can do.

And FWIW, Pangram classifies vast swathes of "your" article as entirely AI-generated. Yes, I know the tool is not perfect, but between your superhuman productivity, and all the subjective tells, and the output from that tool, it goes onto my mental "AI slop" pile.

What I can't understand is why people can't just own it that they used a chatbot and that it was more than just "for review".

Case closed.

Short publication intervals. That's the heuristic you're going with? I have dozens of such unpublished long form articles on fundamental topics, just waiting for me to carve some time to polish. I expect that on a sabbatical I could finish and post them in quick succession. It's an unreliable indicator to determine AI-writing.

Author here, when I share something on my blog, i take full responsibility on the writing and the concepts being explained. This couldn't have been generated with just LLMs. If it was that easy, i wouldn't have bothered to work on it. I am sorry you felt that this was just slop, but i really thought people would enjoy reading it.

I have my rough drafts ready for all the topics which i want to explain. And I actually spent majority of my week working on the networking article, it's a lot.

How were you able to pick this up? Not challenging your assertion. Just really curious. Can you point to some clues? I read it (with my own eyes). I can't see actual evidence the text itself is artificial or at least, that it is not human-curated.

I wonder whether mathematicians got the same reaction when calculators appeared: "You didn't compute every step by hand, so the result doesn't count."

Hi, author here. I didn't vibe code this and have put considerable amount of effort in explaining the ideas. I have used Claude for review and help with visuals. My aim was just to help others understand these concepts easily. Thanks for your feedback, i'll improve the design and reading experience.

My thoughts on reading it (and looking around your site) was that you were building these explanations to help cement your own understanding of the topics and that you were just sharing the results because you thought it might be helpful to others as well. Knowing that you actually built it with the intent to teach just makes me think that it's nice of you to try to be a teacher even if there's a few folks who want to be jerks about your efforts. The world needs more teachers (and learners, too). Gaining, improving, and sharing knowledge is one of humanity's true super-powers. Without it, we'd all still be living like animals in the wild. Thank you for your efforts to contribute in a positive way. At least you're actually making stuff, unlike many of them what gotta always just complain about the things other people make and never actually make anything themselves.

Hi, thanks for your kind words. My intention is just to share my understanding and explain things in the way i wished someone would have explained me if i was not familiar with that topic. And it's a rewarding experience for me too, i do find something new about the topic or find some gaps in my thinking too. And since I am only starting, i am okay with all the feedback and work on my rough edges. I want the readers to walk away with new clarity and understanding.

This is a great article. The current knee-jerk reaction to AI is nothing but human negativity bias. There is a colossal amount of information here akin to what you might find in an intro to computers class. I appreciate seeing things like this.

Thanks, glad you liked it.

for the record, i only meant the visuals/CSS. i just do not understand the LLMs' recent insistence on this inaccessible design language and its ubiquity. vibe-coded frontends have always looked poor but at least they were readable until this recent trend took over.

there were no comments when i was posting mine, so i wanted to clarify i didn't mean to pile on the ai-written accusations. didn't seem like that was the case to me from the parts i've read. i'm just in the corner shouting at the claudes for being bad at frontend.

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

> and it almost always comes across as preachy and just plain wrong

This is the half of that sentence that gets you an upvote from me.

I'm not as sure about the first part of your comment though, because it's really only a certain subset of users here doin' it. Most of the rest of us don't really seem to care nearly as much about such petty things as hunting down users of "AI" to publicly shame them for it as that small group does. Now actual "slop" (often obvious) is maybe a bit more universally hated here (and elsewhere, I'm sure), but that's a whole different phenomenon from the AI "witch hunters".

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.

Thanks, glad you liked it. I have deployed few fixes in the mobile view. Added a horizontal scroll for simulations without reducing the size

so well written ,appreciate it

Thanks. Glad it was useful.

super

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

My own personal "pet peeve" cliche phrase is anything that is "literally" (except it's really figurative) something. So many people for so very long have used "literally" to mean the literal opposite of it's actual meaning. Even when they don't use it to mean it's actual opposite meaning, they'll still often use "literal" to describe a thing that is in no way actually literal. It just "grinds my gears" to hear it.

blooalien says "My own personal "pet peeve" cliche phrase is anything that is "literally" (except it's really figurative) something. So many people for so very long have used "literally" to mean the literal opposite of it's actual meaning. "

That is called "illiteracy". Unfortunately it can be eliminated only by the tedious but necessary process of someone literate (you) politely instructing the illiterate about the proper use of each misused word, e.g., "literally". Takes time, human speed, worthwhile.

+1 usually a sign of midwit and mediocrity. not once I seen "first principles" blogs have any value.

I skimmed the article after I realized that I was being negative. It has some nice explanations so my comment wasn't about the content but just about the wording of the title. :D

Which is really sad, because actually working from first principles is a valid methodology to build efficient products that bypass layers of unnecessary abstraction.

The term itself seems to have lost its real meaning however.

on the other hand, you start distinguishing the pipe from the image of a "the pipe".

To me it just suggests that the blog is going to explore the topic at a low level, ie, discuss the transmission of bits of data via cables or radio waves, rather than discussing HTTP or TLS or whatever. Which in general is something I find quite interesting. (I haven't read this article yet so don't know if it's actually good, and the other comments don't give me much hope.)

Hi, author here. I did explain all the fundamentals without leaving any gaps. Please do give it a read and I hope you like it.

- 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

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