The article itself is less about TTFB than it is with initial connection negotiation between HTTP/(1|2|3), HTTPs and other variables.
What's totally missing is DNS negotiation, for first calls, a slow DNS provider and/or the use of too many domains for content/services and raw initial payload response, such as using a static content server with pre-compressed content and/or a cdn.
While a little dated, the content in "High Performance Web Sites" and "Even Faster Web Sites" books is still very relevant.
Thanks for the suggestions. I have a separate article on DNS resolution.
Instead of putting everything into a single article. I am planning to put detailed things about each step of web performance optimization in a separate article.
Please share if you have any other suggestions.
https://ashu.online/blogs/optimize-dns-resolution-for-fast-website