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Comment by NukedOne | Hacker News Reader

Just skimmed through the Table of Contents. There doesn't seem to be even a word on the physical layer.

Sounds like OP (as with many reading Top-Down) don’t really care about physical layer.

Such a hasty generalization. It's not that we don't care about PHY, but expecting in depth PHY treatment in modern networking book is like expecting semiconductor physics in the The Art of Electronics book [1]. Personally PHY is my passion and trying to propose a new reliable PHY waveform to 5G and upcoming 6G standards.

Modern PHY is like bit twiddling in programming, 99% programmer don't do it and don't care unless you are doing HPC or device driver. In networking those who're doing PHY belong to communication engineering field. For modern networking the relevant PHY mostly dealing with digital I/Q signal for wired/wireless and there are many excellent books on the subject such as this [2].

[1]The Art of Electronics (2015):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38748370

[2] Digital Signal Processing in Modern Communication Systems

https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Signal-Processing-Communicati...

Did you read the description?

> "with an early emphasis on application-layer paradigms and application programming interfaces"

No. Why would I? I was merely commenting on the "best textbook out there to learn modern networking."

I consider the TOC deeper research than the blurb on site. Just pointing out it doesn't mention the book is about the physical layer at all - a probable explanation for why you didn't find it in the TOC.

To clarify, the praiseful comment made me curious and I wanted to know what's so good about the book, so I went through the Table of Contents and noticed that the physical layer is missing. I was just trying to point out that this layer is equally important as others for someone looking to gain a good grasp of networking.

> I was just trying to point out that this layer is equally important as others for someone looking to gain a good grasp of networking.

I don't agree. For those onboarding onto the subject, their mental model will be focused around the higher level details implemented around the application layer. The physical layer only starts to become remotely relevant once you start to delve onto very specialized topics.

Agreed. The physical layer really is a whole different game. I know it exists and I know various limitations of different mediums, but once you get into that low level physics and radio math you are basically stepping out of computer science at that point.

I highly doubt even 1% of engineers could describe how WiFi works on the radio / physical level let alone anything about the variosu ways we make wires and light works.

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