Comment by commandlinefan

When I first started working with computer networks, I just thought of TCP/IP as "low-level stuff" and I focused instead on the higher level stuff. After I kept running into incomprehensible errors seemingly over and over again, I finally broke down and picked up a copy of Richard Steven's "TCP/IP Illustrated". Hands down, the best investment in time I've ever made. If you deal with distributed systems (hint, you do), you need to understand how they actually work.