How networks actually work
Networking feels grubby when it is favour extraction. The research on asking, on the liking gap and on why instrumental networking makes people feel dirty points at a better model.
The glass-to-glass latency budget, RTMP and SRT ingest, why HLS and DASH added tens of seconds, how LL-HLS and WebRTC claw them back, and what each second really costs.
The real physics of latency in fibre, which workloads genuinely benefit from running at the edge, how edge functions and ETSI MEC differ, and the trade-offs vendors leave off the slide.
Transit versus settlement-free and paid peering, what exchange points like AMS-IX and TorIX actually do, why Netflix and Google put caches inside ISPs, and two real peering disputes.
Segments, manifests and the ABR ladder, buffer-based versus throughput-based rate selection, CMAF, and what H.264, HEVC, AV1 and VVC actually save you.
Origin versus edge, anycast and PoPs, cache hit ratio and Cache-Control headers, TLS termination — and what four confirmed CDN outages reveal about depending on one.
Why SAE fixed WPA2’s offline dictionary problem, what transition mode gives back, and a ten-step checklist of router settings that actually reduce risk at home.
A VPN moves your first hop from a network you did not choose to a company you paid. What that actually hides, where the leaks are, and how to read a no-logs claim.
BGP moves every packet between networks and verifies almost nothing. A look at path-vector routing, real hijacks and leaks, and how far RPKI and MANRS have actually got.
How recursive resolvers, root servers and TTLs actually work, why DNSSEC adoption stalled, and what the Dyn, Facebook, Cloudflare and AWS outages teach about failure.