What to read for a system administrator — authors who write about protocols

Additionally, today we have gathered five blogs, where the authors explain complex network protocol concepts in simple language, share practical guides, and talk about their experiments with networks, servers, and open-source software.

About Home Networks and Servers

The blog apalrd’s adventures is a find for sysadmins, network engineers, and those who love experimenting with servers and networks. The author is a software engineer with a strong technical background. He graduated from Kettering University [formerly the General Motors Institute], and later worked at Chrysler and Williams International, where he developed powertrain control systems.

Posts are relatively rare — on average, once every 2–6 months. The engineer writes about his experiences in his home lab, explains the workings of networks and protocols, and publishes guides and analyses. For example, in one of his recent articles, the author analyzes the performance of protocols, provides configuration examples for a home server: how to configure keys, certificates, and interfaces, including IPv6 support.

In another article, the author dives into the world of Network Access Control. He explains how to authenticate devices connecting to the network and provides configuration examples for a RADIUS server, discussing certificate configuration.

The engineer also writes about related technologies such as virtualization and infrastructure solutions. In particular, he wrote about working with Netbox — a system that helps track device relationships, store data about hardware, IP addresses, prefixes, and other network parameters. It helps sysadmins maintain order in complex network configurations.

Overall, the variety of topics makes his materials useful for many homelab projects. Additionally, the author runs a YouTube channel, where he posts videos about experiments with networks and smart home devices almost every week.

Experience of an Internet Service Provider Employee

The blog MTU Ninja will be useful not only for system administrators but also for anyone interested in network technologies and server solutions. Its author, Vincent Bernat, is an open-source software developer (including for the Debian ecosystem). He works at a large French internet provider and previously collaborated with companies like Deezer and Orange, where he dealt with cloud technologies, streaming, and telecommunications solutions.

Publications are irregular: sometimes several times a month, and sometimes only once every six months. However, each article is worth the wait: Vincent knows how to explain complex concepts in an accessible way, supporting the theory with practical examples from his personal experience. The key topics of the blog are network technologies and protocols, automation with Ansible, working with Nix and NixOS, and cryptography.

So, in one article, the author explains why content providers need IPv6, and in another, he explains how he and his team developed a SQL-like language for filtering streams in Akvorado. This is an open-source tool that aggregates network data flows using IPFIX or sFlow and stores them in ClickHouse.

Another useful resource to check out is "Offline PKI". There, Vincent describes how to build a certificate management system using three hardware keys and an inexpensive single-board computer.

DNS (and a little bit of system administration)

Developer Julia Evans is into low-level programming. She writes about Linux architecture, Git, networks, and terminals — but she especially focuses on DNS. Her articles are compact, yet written in an accessible language and include examples. For instance, Julia lists reasons (of course, slightly biased — it's a personal blog) why DNS is difficult to learn. She points out that many system details are hidden [like what's in the resolver cache, which library sends the DNS query], as well as confusion in tools. She also explains how to work in the face of this uncertainty.

In another article — "A small tool for making DNS queries" — Julia talks about her project dns-lookup. This web tool for executing queries continues her efforts to popularize networking technologies. It allows you to analyze DNS records (A, CNAME, MX, etc.) by sending queries to a public DNS server. As the author writes, dns-lookup is an alternative to dig, since its standard output often confuses beginners.

Networks and Retro

Mete Balci's blog is the notes of an engineer passionate about computers and electronics. He started studying computers in the late '80s and earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in computer and electronic engineering in the 2000s. On GitHub, he publishes projects, including tools for DNSSEC and analyzing Mastodon networks.

His "digital diary" covers a wide range of topics: from networking technologies and protocols to microcontroller programming, working with Linux, and 3D printing. The author writes about both modern systems and retro technologies, like Tru64 UNIX — an old operating system developed for servers based on Alpha processors. He pays special attention to practice: server setup and performance optimization. He posts one to three entries per month.

For example, in one of his notes, Mete discussed an issue he faced while working with IPv6 prefixes. His story involves a static address (/48) and an OTO ID — a unique identifier for an optical fiber socket.

His blog also contains a guide for installing OpenSSH—a set of tools for secure remote access and data transfer over the SSH protocol—on Tru64 UNIX 4.0F. The author's goal was to run an SSH server despite limitations (such as the lack of PIC and /dev/urandom), which resulted in a full step-by-step guide.

The author's posts are published under the Creative Commons license (version BY-NC-SA 4.0).

Mixed bag (but mostly about hardware)

The author of the BrixIT blog is Martin Braam, an engineer specializing in low-level programming, open hardware, and mobile Linux systems. He talks about working with networking technologies and explains networking equipment principles. For example, in one post Martin described developing a managed switch based on the RTL8367S chip. He designed the board, chose the components, and configured Linux for traffic management (naturally, sharing configurations and schematics).

And in another post, he shared his experience in designing a video capture system. He came up with a streaming kit containing a Radxa x4 microcomputer, an audio mixer, and a switch. One of the problems he still needs to tackle is the noise from the cooling system.

According to Martin, one of his favorite activities is solving PCB layout and routing tasks. So in his latest post he shared a story about how he decided to create a simple browser game inspired by the PCB design process in KiCad.

More details—in the course "How Networks Work".