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.

What is wrong with the second edition?

It was rewritten by a different author (the original author, Richard Stevens, died in a car accident in the late 90's). I guess the new guy tried his best, but he just doesn't have the writing skill that Stevens had.

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".

I have books that I purchased decades ago like this that are still languishing on my bookshelf.

Lol I'll probably buy it and put on my bookshelf with all the others.

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.