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Networks Unmasked
How Data Travels, What It Reveals, and the Cost of Privacy
This book is 100% completeLast updated on 2026-10-26
A 22-chapter explanation of how network traffic moves, what observers can learn, and how privacy mechanisms affect performance.
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Definitive Edition, version 1.0.
Networks Unmasked explains how a request moves through a computer and across a network, and what each stage reveals to an observer. Its 22 chapters cover host networking, addressing, routing, DNS, TCP and UDP, application protocols, TLS, firewalls, proxies, VPNs, Tor, and I2P.
Engineering case studies from Ghostnector, the author's Linux network-privacy project, examine traffic confinement, lifecycle failures, verification, and performance measurement. The book distinguishes directly inspected evidence from reported test results and includes a separate reconstruction of recorded latency samples.
The evidence boundary is Ghostnector commit 17a03c4 and technical sources consulted on 24 October 2026. The book has 108 pages, seven original explanatory figures, two appendices, and 68 reference entries. Its cases describe particular implementations and experiments; they do not establish universal privacy guarantees.
Text and original artwork by Emil Valiyev. AI assisted the final editorial audit of wording, spelling, organization, and structural consistency.
Copyright (c) 2026 Emil Valiyev. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Edition DOI: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.34792464.v1
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About the Author
Emil Valiyev
Emil Valiyev is the author of Networks Unmasked and Windows Never Forgets. He develops Ghostnector, the Linux network-privacy project used for this book's engineering case studies.
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