What is networking?

Networking is how computers exchange data.

Key concepts:

• IP address: identifies a machine
• Port: identifies a program/service on that machine
• Protocol: rules for communication

Common protocols:

• TCP: reliable (web, SSH)
• UDP: fast, not guaranteed (streaming, DNS)
• HTTP/HTTPS: web protocol (built on TCP)

What you’ll learn here

• Make HTTP requests (APIs) using requestsrequests and urlliburllib
• Work with JSON data
• Build a basic HTTP server
• Use sockets for low-level TCP communication
• Timeouts, retries, and error handling

Safety note

Always be careful when handling:

• user input from the internet
• authentication tokens
• opening ports on public machines

🧪 Try It Yourself

Exercise 1 – HTTP GET with urllib

Exercise 2 – Socket Connection

Exercise 3 – Resolve a Hostname