2 Must-Have Cheat Sheets for Network Engineers and Students

4 min readSep 14, 2023

Learning and remembering every facts about a new topic is difficult and sometimes impossible. Cheat sheets are designed to help you memorize and recall essential information quickly, making them an efficient way to learn and use new technologies.

In this article, I will give you the only 2 cheat sheets you will ever need for Internet related technologies. They will help you answer any of your questions without worrying about all the details.

These two cheat sheets are great resource for both beginners and experienced engineers. They can be used to lower the entry barrier for novices and help experts refresh their internet skills.

What Are Cheat Sheets?

Cheat sheets are amazing tools. They come in handy to students in preparation of or during their exams but also to professionals who can use them as concise quick reference guides.

Cheat sheets provide a condensed, easy-to-access reference for key information. They allow beginners and experts to quickly look up important details without having to search through extensive documentation or manuals.

A well designed cheat sheet usually fits on one page and holds all the information related to one topic. Designing a cheat sheet can be challenging as they need to be readable while being holistic.

Cheat Sheets for Computer Science

Cheat sheets for computer science contain all the most essential information about a specific subject or domain in short, such as the syntax, commands, functions, shortcuts, or hotkeys.

Programming and software cheat sheets are extremely popular amongst computer science students and IT professionals who can quickly access information at one glance. This is also true for computer networking.

Cheat sheets for Internet technologies can be useful for beginners who want to get started with a new technology, or for experts who want to refresh their memory on some details. They summarize a wide range of topics and concepts into a compact format that can be used for quick reference of a particular protocol or service.

Benefits of Computer Networking Cheat Sheets

Computer networking involves a wide range of protocols and services. Each protocol comes with its own header consisting of various fields. Details regarding a field include its name, its position, its length, and the list of values it can hold, each value carrying a specific meaning.

The two spread sheets I give below are completely free and easily accessible online. So remember, to make your learning process smoother and faster, utilize these cheat sheets.

TCP/IP Cheat sheet

To download the TCP/IP cheat sheet click here. This cheat sheet covers the following concepts:

Link layer: Ethernet frames, ARP requests and responses.
IPv4 addresses: IPv4 classes, IPv4 special-purpose addresses
IPv4 packets: IPv4 header, IPv4 options, IPv4 pseudo-header
ICMP messages: Destination unreachable, Time Exceeded, Parameter Problem, Redirect Message, Echo request and reply
Transport Layer: TCP segment, TCP options, UDP datagrams, Well-known port numbers.
Application layer: DNS Messages

IPv6 Cheat Sheet

To download the IPv6 cheat sheet click here. This cheat sheet covers the following concepts:

IPv6: IPv6 Addresses, IPv6 Packet Header, Header Extensions (Routing and Fragment), IPv6 Pseudo-header.
ICMPv6: Destination Unreachable (Type 1), Packet Too Big (Type 2), Time Exceeded (Type 3), Parameter Problem (Type 4), Echo Request and Reply (Type 128 and 129).
Neighbor Discovery Options: Source and Target Link-Layer Address Options (Type 1 and 2), Prefix Information Option (Type 3), Redirected Header Option (Type 4), MTU Option (Type 5),
Neighbor Discovery Messages: Router Solicitation (Type 133), Router Advertisement (Type 134), Neighbor Solicitation (Type 135), Neighbor Advertisement (Type 136), Redirect (Type 137).
Multicast Listener Discovery