Everything I know about (TCP) congestion control in data center is quite old, having covered the basics in an undergraduate computer networking class. I also realize the state of the art has moved along quite a lot -- modern networks have multiple links, different topologies and load balance across them, ECN is more common place and algorithms based on BW-delay product, explicit admission control and RTT measurements are commonplace. Finally, I also realize that there are schemes and approaches that I probably don't even know of given I haven't followed this field closely.

There seems to be a complex play between workloads, desired properties, network topologies and algorithms and I'm looking for anything a primer/summary/lecture notes/class on the underlying principles and concepts on which modern algorithms are being designed. Anything that would allow a person 20 years out-of-date to come up to speed in the developments that have happened in the last 20 years.

As a bonus I would also appreciate any links to papers/resources on how modern data center topologies are constructed and used (if any exist).

I realise there may not be a "one resource" but a series of papers; for those that follow this field, what would you recommend?

So I recently got interested in systems programming and I like it. I have been learning Go and Rust. I know to expand the potential projects I can do, it would useful to learn operating systems, distributed systems, compilers and probably take a computer systems class. Throughout the process I’d hopefully find what I like and dig deeper.

However, I don’t have an idea of what makes a decent systems programmer. I believe that it would be a good thing to have a sense of an ideal I can work towards. It doesn’t have to be objective. I think one would be useful to make me plan for my study and progress. Currently I just have project ideas which idk if it’s all I should do.

Maybe I have a skewed sense of what I should do in this space. I would appreciate any direction.