Prerequisites & Setup

May 11, 2026 · View on GitHub

What you need to know before starting

This curriculum assumes you can already write code. It doesn't teach C or Python from scratch — it teaches networking, using C and Python as tools.

C, intermediate level

You should be comfortable with:

  • Pointers, including pointers to structs and pointers to pointers
  • struct, union, bit fields, __attribute__((packed))
  • memcpy, memmove, memset, memcmp
  • malloc, free, and ownership thinking
  • Function pointers (for callbacks and dispatch tables)
  • The C preprocessor (#define, #ifdef, #include)
  • Compiling with gcc -Wall -Wextra and reading the warnings
  • Reading man 2 and man 3 pages

If any of that is unfamiliar, work through Beej's Guide to C first. It's free, ~200 pages, and covers everything you need.

Python 3, intermediate level

You should be comfortable with:

  • The difference between bytes and str
  • struct.pack and struct.unpack for binary data
  • Generators and iterators
  • asyncio basics: async def, await, asyncio.run
  • pytest for tests, fixtures, and parametrization
  • The standard library: socket, selectors, ipaddress, hashlib

CS fundamentals

  • Binary, hex, two's complement
  • Big-endian vs little-endian
  • Basic data structures: queues, stacks, hash tables, ring buffers
  • Basic concurrency: threads, mutexes, atomics

Linux command line

  • File system navigation, pipes, redirection
  • ip, ss, tcpdump, dig, curl, nc
  • Building with make
  • Editing with vim, nano, or your editor of choice

If tcpdump -i any -n port 53 doesn't make sense, spend a few hours with the tcpdump tutorial.

Hardware

You need:

  • An x86-64 or ARM64 machine running Linux. Phases 9, 10, 13, 15 specifically need Linux.
  • 8 GB RAM minimum. 16 GB+ recommended for the kernel-build phases.
  • 30 GB free disk for the kernel sources, eBPF toolchain, and Mininet.

Don't run the kernel-module or namespace lessons on your daily-driver machine. Use a VM.

Setting up an Ubuntu 24.04 VM

The fastest path is Multipass:

# Install Multipass (works on macOS, Linux, Windows)
# https://multipass.run

multipass launch --name nfs --cpus 4 --memory 8G --disk 30G 24.04
multipass shell nfs

# Inside the VM:
git clone https://github.com/TanayK07/networking-from-scratch.git
cd networking-from-scratch
./tools/setup-vm.sh

setup-vm.sh installs everything: gcc, clang, make, libbpf-dev, linux-headers, tcpdump, wireshark-common, mininet, virtme-ng, libsodium-dev, libssl-dev, Python 3 with pip, and a bunch of utility packages.

Alternative: native Linux

If you're already on Linux and OK with breaking things:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y \
    build-essential gcc clang make pkg-config \
    python3 python3-pip python3-venv \
    libbpf-dev linux-headers-$(uname -r) linux-tools-$(uname -r) \
    libsodium-dev libssl-dev libunity-dev \
    iproute2 iputils-ping tcpdump tshark wireshark-common \
    iperf3 netcat-openbsd dnsutils \
    bpftrace bcc-tools \
    qemu-system-x86 mininet \
    afl++ valgrind

pip install --user pytest pytest-asyncio scapy ruff mypy tox aioquic

For the DDS phase (P15), you'll also need:

sudo apt install -y cyclonedds-dev
# or build from source: https://github.com/eclipse-cyclonedds/cyclonedds

Verifying your setup

cd networking-from-scratch
make verify

This runs through every required tool and prints what's missing.

You should see output like:

✓ gcc 13.2.0
✓ clang 18.1.0
✓ python3 3.12.3
✓ make 4.3
✓ libbpf headers
✓ linux-headers-6.8.0-31-generic
✓ tcpdump 4.99.4
✓ ip / iproute2
✓ ss
✓ libsodium
✓ libssl3 (3.0.13)
All required tools found.

If any line says ✗, install the missing dependency and re-run.