Networking

Review by Ariel Kane:

If you own only one book on Networking this should be the one. I was fortunate enough to receive an advance copy of this book since Dr. Misner was a guest on Being Here the Internet radio show my husband and I host, and we were delighted to read it. Ivan and his co-authors David Alexander and Brian Hilliard do a brilliant job laying out their core value that networking is not about getting leads and making contacts but about building meaningful connections.

Networking Like a Pro builds upon itself with real life examples from the authors’ extensive experiences. It investigates your mindset about networking, moves on to strategies, shows how to make your network work for you and then gives you the secrets of the masters. And Dr. Ivan Misner is a master. I know that readers will also really love having access to Misner’s Networking Scorecard so that they can measure the results of their networking efforts. I have already loaned my copy to a friend who is new to networking and was delighted to hear that by using the tools contained in Networking Like a Pro she just booked a major job. Perhaps just as important as the new ideas you will find in Ivan’s book, you will also recognize the things that you are already doing that work so that you can reinforce them and network with confidence and consistency. More than just an engaging, informative read, Networking Like a Pro is a rewarding, meaningful lifestyle. Buy this book!

Review by S. Gilbert:

This book is a steal for the price with all the hard earned information it contains. We can all learn to work smarter in the ways we do things rather than harder swimming up the wrong streams sometimes – or forgetting to swim at all!

But if you follow the link at author’s website home page (www.ivanmisner.com) for a few days only during the first week of February in celebration of International Networking Week (Feb 1 – 5) you’ll also get a 6 month membership to NetworkingNow as a bonus for no additional charge. Pair the book with the bonus and it’s a win/win way to start off the New Year and grow your business substantially.

Review by Michael Brand (mbrand@backcountry-equipment.com):

This book (4th Edition) answered the questions I had about networking my small business. Specifically, I needed to know: 1) should I use a peer-to-peer or a client/server LAN, 2) if client/server, should the server be dedicated as a server or could the server also be used as a workstation, 3) which operating system would be most appropriate for the clients or peers, 4) which network operationing system would be most appropriate for a server, 5) is the installation of the network within my scope.Before buying the book I had searched the Web in vain (both computing-specific sites and search engines) looking for answers to these questions. This book provided the information I needed to answer all five questions. The information is very product specific (eg, Novell NetWare can be difficult to install and the complication and expense is not justified for a five-user network; a peer-to-peer LAN is easy to set up with Win95 or Win98; PCI network cards are much easier to configure than the older styles). The book is well written (ie, easy to read, to-the-point, relevant).If you decide to install a peer-to-peer LAN with Win98, this is probably the only book you will need. If you decide to install a client/server LAN with a network operating system (NOS) such as NetWare or NT Server, you will probably need a book specific to those systems for installation and maintenance (there are Dummy books for both systems – which I haven’t yet read). If you don’t know which NOS to use, this book can help you decide.

Review by C. McGlone:

Not a bad book, but it is VERY basic. If you have worked with a network before, there is little information you can glean from this text. For someone who knows little about networks, or computers as a whole, this may be a good purchase. Do not, however, expect this book to teach you everything you need to know about working with a network. It is very simple, which makes the topics easy to understand, but expect to get another book centering on your particular network if you plan to do some serious networking. I would, however, recommend this book to newbies in networking as it goes over terms and concepts that everyone must know.

Review by Jean E. Baur:

As a career counselor I was delighted to read Orville’s book as it’s clear, easy to follow and demystifies networking. One of his points is that these need to be “comfortable” conversations–not cold calling. He also keeps the focus on networking clear: reaching insiders and hiring managers. My advice is read this book and follow these steps–you won’t regret it!

Review by Grace M. Totoro:

One word describes this book, FABULOUS! This is a must read for everyone who is in job search. Whether you consider yourself “networking challenged” a “networking guru” or a “forever novice”, Orville does an excellent job at creating a recession proof, systemized approach to networking which will help even you!

Review by Digital Puer:

I’m a graduate student in Comp Sci, and I recently had the opportunity to take a networking class again just to refresh my basic knowledge (my dissertation topic isn’t related to networks). It was a pleasant surprise for me that the class utilised this textbook. I have been at the university level in CS for 8+ years (grad + undergrad), and this book is *by far* the best introductory computer science textbook I have ever read in any CS subject.The book is very well-written and extremely interesting to read. I was never bored in any chapter. Kurose and Ross are knowledgable experts in their field, and their exposition of the material is fantastic. Unlike Tanenbaum’s book, they start at the application layer and move down. IMHO, this is a far better pedagogical strategy, because young students these days already have an excellent layer-5 understanding thanks to daily interaction with HTTP, IM, P2P file sharing, etc. If I remember correctly from my undergrad days, my own experience in a bottom-up approach, starting at the physical layer, really put me to sleep and put me off from networking. That’s a shame, because networking is a really exciting field.The best parts of the book are the breadth, thorough use of real-world topics, and the illustrations. In fact, the diagrams and illustrations are just plain great. Most technical writers often rely too much on the written word. Here, the authors augment almost every pair of pages with an illustration; this is simply remarkable. The explanations of fundamental topics (such as packet-switching, DNS, TCP congestion control, IP routing, and ethernet) are *extremely* clear. More advanced topics are very up-to-date, covering cutting-edge subjects such as P2P, CDNs, security, NATs, 802.11, RTP, etc. I have not found a better introductory explanation of CDNs anywhere else. Although networking does have a lot of math in various areas, this introductory book does not get too much in detail in mathematical discourse, making this book very readable. That’s a fine approach in my opinion, as a deep mathematical analysis of various topics is best left for grad school or a professional job.The authors’ academic background really shows. Every topic is filled with citations/references to other work. This is great, because this book is just an introductory book with wide breadth but is otherwise lacking in significant depth. The interested reader (future grad student or network engineer?) can easily follow up on any topic he/she likes thanks to the exhaustive list of references.As if all of that were not enough, there is an accompanying website that has interactive Java applets demonstrating various topics as well as a set of Powerpoint slides for download. Furthermore, I enjoyed the interchapter dialogues with various famous researchers in the field.All in all, this is an outstanding book for the undergrad level, and I expect this would be a great book for professionals who want to have a firm grasp on networking fundamentals. I wish all my undergrad books were written as well as this one.

Review by PigRoasterDad:

Our course, Networking and Data Communications, was assigned to me in the eleventh hour. Though I have been teaching Computer Science for 22 years I had not taught this course before. I chose this book because it seemed to be well written and had good support materials but, as we all know, there is no guarantee that the students will agree. The course is over now and I just received the student evaluations of me, the text and the course. They were much better than I hoped for and I give the bulk of the credit to this textbook. Here are the three written comments from students regarding the book “Book was good, approach was beneficial.” “The book for this course [Kurose,2000] was excellent. I recommend keeping it.” “The book was very useful, but the website could use some work.”Students are also asked to rate the book on a scale from 1 (difficult to understand) to 5 (Clear and easy to read). The book was rated as follows by the 22 students in the class: 8 fives, 13 fours, 1 three, 1 two and no ones. As an instructor, I found the book to be well written and well edited. Rarely did I find errors in the text and most of those that I did find were typographical errors. I found the web site to be especially useful. The discussions by other readers pointed out things to watch out for and gave me an easy way to make general preparations well in advance. I had my students do the first three lab assignments. They especially liked the two application layer assignments and had a good bit of trouble with the transport layer assignment. I found the supplied code to be well organized and the parts that were left out for the students to complete challenged them (and me) in the right directions. The approach of focusing on Internet networking was an excellent choice for an introduction to networking. The choice to start at the application layer and move down to the physical layer is natural and understandable. It drives home the whole idea of layered architectures well and is a great example of the power of top-down approaches.I will follow the advice of the student that recommends we keep this text when I teach the course next year.As any reader of this might guess, I highly recommend this text and ancillary materials for an introductory course in networking. I congratulate the authors and all that helped them on this project for the fine work they did.

Review by Jeff Lippincott:

I just loved this book. I regularly read business books on business plans, marketing plans, and publicity or public relations plans. I really hadn’t thought about it before, but after reading this book any entrepreneur should have a networking plan, too.

“Networking is now the critical strategy for business development. Professionals and entrepreneurs need to know how to gain visibility and credibility in their target markets, and how to build and maintain relationships for long-term growth.” (Barber, page xiii). I agree 100% with the authors! And this book is the book to help you put together your networking plan. It is broken into the four following parts to help you in the process:

I. Survey your skills and mindset (Chapters 1-2)

II. Set your strategy (Chapters 3-5)

III. Sharpen your skills (Chapters 6-13)

IV. Select your settings (Chapters 14-20)

The chapters included in the book are as follows:

1. Assess your skills

2. Change your mindset

3. Teach trust

4. Develop your relationships

5. Go with your goals

6. Know the “netiquette”

7. Avoid the top 20 turnoffs

8. “Who are you?”

9. “What do you do?”

10. “What are we going to talk about?”

11. Make conversations flow

12. End with the future in mind

13. Follow through

14. Network at work

15. Make it rain clients

16. (Net)work from home

17. Make the most of your memberships

18. Rev up referral groups

19. Connect at conventions

20. Jump-start your job hunt

My favorite chapters were 7, 14, 15, 16, and 17. But all the chapters are great. There really are no spare words included in this text. And that is one of the reasons I liked it so much. Very well written. 5 stars!

Review by Dave Carpenter:

I have been teaching high end professionals (lawyers, accountants, investment bankers, etc.) how to network for many years. As a result, I read almost anything that comes out on this subject. And, then I review the best of the best here on Amazon.

Authors Anne Baber and Lynne Waymon are obvious experts on this subject and communicate their expertise in a well written, very straightforward basis. I love that they start by emphasizing the importance of a networking strategy before diving into the details of tactics. And, I really like that they spend time on the importance of building trust in all networking activities.

Heretofore, my favorites on this subject have been “Click” by George Frasier as to strategy (his concept of “connecting” takes networking to an higher level); and “The Little Teal Book of Trust” by Jeffrey Gittomer. This book does an even better job than the two of those on a myriad of very important tactical issues.

As much as I liked this book (and I do highly recommend it), the absence of treatment of net based social networking seems to be a real oversight. Unless I missed it, the great online networking tool, LinkedIn, is not even mentioned. For a book this recent and one that has chosen “social networks” as one of the things for which it is indexed in the Library of Congress, this oversight keeps me from ranking it as a five star on this subject.

That being said, I do recommend the book highly…just supplement it with a good book on the role of social networking, and especially on LinkedIn. On networking tactics, other than online, this is as good as it gets.

Review by Brockster:

Very Readable, Outstanding Book

This book was a very pleasant surprise, it is both easy to understand and contains a lot of in depth information on topics that interested me. Contained in this book are the introductory topics such as architecture and topologies that you need to understand modern networking, presented along with examples that extend the concepts to current networking designs.

Among the chapters I liked the most were the ones on network discovery and mapping, bandwidth and throughput, and particularly the one on modern routing. Each of these chapters not only explains the underlying theory involved, but shows how the industry applies the different technologies to make modern networking possible. Signaling theory, sampling, multiplexing, traffic engineering, and other complex topics were introduced in a way that made me feel that I finally understood them for the first time. The discussion wasn’t dumbed down, but started at an introductory level and proceeded to very advanced treatments. I think it is a testament to the quality of the writing that the author’s approach worked so well.

The first part of the book is on theory, the second on hardware, and the third part is on system types. Hardware is presented on a practical level with enough theory to be able to understand how the hardware is deployed. I like the discussion of what a network interface is quite a lot. It’s nice to find topics such as home networking, peer-to-peer networks, personal LANs, LANs, WANs, WiFi, SANs, and high performance networking discussed and containing up-to-date information. There are presentations on topics such as The Onion Router (TOR) network, torrents, and many other topics that I haven’t seen in any other networking book.

I wasn’t as impressed with the TCP/IP protocol treatment, it was more general than I would have liked and not as detailed. However, all of the requisite topics are there and if you are new to the subject the information will get you up to speed. I’ve never really understood how storage networks relate to regular networks, this book clarified the relation between the two completely. I loved the chapters on streaming media, telephony and VoIP as they contained many examples of real world systems that I’ve worked with on my own networks. The network security chapters are also good, particularly the firewall chapter.

I would have preferred to have a larger section on network diagnostics and on network management. These are complex issues that are invaluable. Perhaps in upcoming editions the author will consider expanding these topics. As it stands this is a pretty long book, nearly 900 pages in length. I think that this is the best general networking book available, and that if you are going to buy one networking book and keep it on your shelf that this is the one to have. It is probably the best networking book of the current crop, and I’m glad I found it.

Review by Jeremy Moskowitz:

In college, I took some “Graduate Level” courses. One was on networking. We went in detail to “old and crusty” junk like the Aloha protocol (useful only for historic reasons, now) and other arcane junk. Then I got a hold of Barrie’s new book. And what I love about it is that all the information is practical and up to date about MODERN NETWORKING. Yes, there’s some history now and again, but then we rocket up to practical modern networking. Yes, you’ll get your “subnetting” formulas in this book, but there’s also a lot more to networking than just that stuff. Think bigger, like Barrie has, and you’ll learn about other kinds of networking you might not immediately think about; like Storage Networking (great for someone like me, who doesn’t dabble in that too much, but might need to someday), the underlying protocols for mail transport, streaming media, telephony/VOIP and more. Networking is a big place, and Barrie brings it to you. If you need a good overall book with various networking types and examples, check it out. This book has something for everyone.

Review by Andrew:

Please be aware that this book (and others by the same publisher)are meant for colleges and/or trade schools and thus the answers to exercises, labs, projects, etc are available ONLY to instructors. Furthermore, neither the publisher nor the authors maintain a website for errata so you are on your own if you misunderstand a concept due to typos and false information.

Review by Michael J Woznicki:

Learning the foundation and fundamentals of networking is most important to passing the Network+, CCNA, MCSE, CAN, CIW, Inet+ exams and this book will get you started towards the certification success you are looking for.Updated to cover Windows 2000 and Linux, this book is made for the classroom setting. The authors include hands-on projects and case projects to help the student learn in more than a self-study and lecture setting.With topics like network concepts, design of VLANs and topologies, media, nics, protocols, architectures like 10 and 100 mpbs, token ring, apple talk, FDDI, CDDI, ATM and SONET, simple and complex networks, WANS, and troubleshooting, you have everything you need to gain a great foundation for the networking arena.With everything in the book there is also review questions, chapter summaries and key terms for each chapter. Overall this is the perfect teaching guide.

Review by Michael B Cohn:

Everything about Cisco Networking Simplified screams accessibility: the landscape layout, the softback cover, the illustrations drawn without a ruler that literally take the sharp edges off of computers, servers, and switches (router icons, fortunately, are already round). A note on the cover indicates for the curious that the book is in full color. Each short chapter is broken into “at-a-glance” subsections on each topic, headed “Why Should I Care?” and “What Are the Problems to Solve?”This book is clearly written for two types of people: executives from a non-technical background who get flustered when speaking to network engineers, and networking novices looking for a friendly introduction to the subject before they begin serious study for, say, the CCNA.When I first opened Cisco Networking Simplified, I was a bit put off by the intensity with which I felt the authors and illustrator were trying to convince me just how down-to-Earth they are. The organization of the book is such that it’s so easy to flip through, the pithy explanations so easy to digest, that one might grow quickly suspicious that here is a book designed more to make the reader feel at ease than to actually teach her anything.But one would be wrong. CNS is a good basic reference book. It’s short because it sticks to the essentials. It’s weirdly-inked illustrations do make the concepts clearer. And the friendly tone never gets smarmy. On the contrary, Maggiora and Doherty anticipate a newcomer’s reaction to the material well enough to know when to be terse, and when to insert whimsical asides. The unofficial eighth (political) and ninth (technical religion) layers of the OSI model and the use of ISDN to mean It Still Does Nothing are fun tidbits, well-placed, and perhaps even useful as mnemonic devices. The paragraph explaining that “routers switch and switches route,” is appropriately illustrated with two people scratching their heads. That the authors make room for “Algorhyme,” Radia Perlman’s poem describing the Spanning Tree Algorhythm (which she also wrote), shows that they know the difference between cute and distracting, and cute and relevant.There are some problems, though. For example, the discussion of classful addresses is outdated. The class A, B, and C system is presented as the solution to a problem caused by unanticipated Internet growth. That may have once been true, but now the time when the class system was itself perceived as the next wave of that problem has already come and gone (gone, because outside isolated or masqueraded networks, class addressing has been replaced with CIDR). An executive who reads this book and then asks his engineers whether the company has been assigned a class A, B, or C address isn’t going to get a lot of respect. A more serious problem is the confusing definition of the term DCE. On page 209, it’s “data circuit-terminating device.” On page 210, it’s “data communications equipment.” The first definition is more popular according to a google search, but makes less sense (where does the “E” come from?). Perhaps both definitions are somehow valid, but in a book like this, it shouldn’t be the reader’s job to figure out which one. And IDSN gets two detailed pages with illustrations, while the more popular (in the U.S.) DSL gets little more than a paragraph. Also, to call this book Cisco Networking Simplified is not really accurate. A better title might have been: Cisco Presents: Networking Simplified. Cisco has no special claim to, say, IP addressing, which is discussed in some detail. Of course, to write a basic networking book without discussing IP would be silly, and Cisco makes a lot of products that deal with IP addressing. But so do a lot of other companies.In short, I recommend this book (three of five stars), but with caveats. Technically-minded people who already have some experience in the networking field will probably be put off by the coloring book look and feel (but then, it wasn’t written for them). Novices who are reading this book as the first step on their way to certification may find that, ironically, it provides much more information on certain subjects (voice-over IP, for example) than may be sought. It’s hard to imagine anyone reading this book straight through of their own volition. It’s a beginner’s reference. If you’re confused by a topic as it’s dealt with in another networking book, you can be fairly sure that if CNS covers it, then CNS contains the simplest explanation of that topic that you’re likely to find.

Review by Grant Willey:

Cisco Networking Simplified, published by Cisco Press, ISBN# 1587200740, Pages=288, Paperback, no CD-ROM includedWhen most folks hear the word Cisco, the first thoughts that come to mind are routers and the Internet. But what this book does is introduce you to so much more. You’ll see that Cisco networking as a whole includes a vast array of hardware, software, telecommunications gear, protocols, and cutting edge technologies. Authors Paul Maggiora (CCIE, a former Cisco employee) and Jim Doherty (a current Cisco marketing manager) bring Cisco networking direct to you with an illustrated approach to learning a myriad of internetworking topics. If you’re the type of person who prefers a visual approach to learning, the colorful illustrations and easy-to-understand diagrams should make you feel right at home.Before obtaining this book, the question I had was “what does this book have to offer?” As I found out, a little bit of everything. For example; are you interested in learning more about optical networking, ATM, broadband networking, or how frame-relay works? Are you interested in network security, hackers, firewalls, and intrusion detection systems? Perhaps you’d like to understand what being a network administrator is like with respect to bandwidth monitoring, routing, switching, or high-availability networking? Other topics of interest include: explanations of how information is moved along that “information superhighway” we’ve all heard about, what Storage Area Networking is, how you can create networks without wires, and why your organization may be utilizing VPN’s or MPLS. You’ll find the answers to these questions and hundreds more in this book.I believe the target audience for this book is “rookie” technical or help-desk staff that have some experience with computer networking, although those readers who are completely new to this area of computing shouldn’t be “bulldozed-over” with tons of technical jargon. Seasoned IT professionals shouldn’t pass this book up as being too easy either, because we all need a good refresher course on the basics from time-to-time, and that’s the niche that this book fulfills.A common complaint among IT professionals is that many books written nowadays are filled with “real-life” situations the author has experienced. I find that many of these situations aren’t useful to me, and find myself rather distracted from understanding the books intended content. “We just want the facts” is what many technicians and networking professionals are saying. Thankfully, this book gives you nothing but the facts accompanied by clear and concise explanations.The only criticisms I have of the book are that it didn’t contain specific references to additional information and that it wasn’t bigger! It was so easy to read and understand that when I finished studying it I thought, “Well what about this technology, what about that protocol, where’s the best place to go for more info?” Published in June 2003, I’ve found it contains many of the hottest topics out there today including IPv6, ECDN (Educational Content Delivery Network), IP convergence (voice+video+data), VoIP (voice over data networks), disaster recovery planning, and web content caching – just to name a few. Overall, I was very pleased with the books contents and the formatting of the text and illustrations made for excellent knowledge retention. I’ve seen that the authors have previously released other networking titles, so you may want to check them out if you’re looking for additional technical details on topics covered/not-covered in this book. Cisco Networking Simplified won’t prepare you for any Cisco networking certification tests, but you know what? I’ve always said that you can’t comprehend advanced networking functions and methodologies if you don’t have a clear understanding of the basics and fundamentals. This book is a good starting point. On a rating scale of 1-5 (worst-best), I’d give this book a 5. I truly believe that the very reasonable cost of this book will be some of the best money (under .00) you’ll ever spend on an addition to your IT library bookshelf.Disclaimer: This is an honest review and I do not benefit from it in any manner.

Review by R. Bolhuis:

When I volunteered to join the technology comittee at my kids’ school, I found out that I needed to get up to speed on computer Networking. It’s a small school with an entirely volunteer tech support staff and the previous network administrator wanted to leave the committee.

I consider myself to be a power user when it comes to computers, but I did not have a real good grasp of how networks operated. This book bills itself as “a handy all-in-one guide which provides a bird’s-eye view of all the important (network) stuff”. I found that it did cover all the aspects of setting up and running networks: large, small, and even wireless. The book starts by covering information that is universal to all networks (terminology, network planning, etc.). It progresses through various aspects of network installation and configuration, security issues, specific network functions, and finally, information specific to several different server operating systems. Operating systems covered include Windows 2000 and 2003 server, Novell Netware 6 and 6.5, Linux, and Mac OS/X Server.

While this book probably won’t provide enough information for you to become a certified network administrator, I feel it does a great job of explaining what you need to know to get up and running.

Review by John Matlock:

I’ve often thought that computer books tend to leave out the first forty pages or so that tell you the broad picture of just what it is that you are trying to do. This book can almost be viewed as the front end of any number of dedicated networking books that start off just about where this one ends. Those books then go off in great detail about the arcane details that as the author of this book says ‘apply mostly to networks at places like NASA and the CIA.’

This book starts off with the most basic descriptions: “A network is nothing more than two or more computers connected by a cable (or wireless adapter) so that they can share information. From there it goes on to talk about how to set a network up. It’s intended for the complete beginner and talks about things like cables, routers, hubs and so on in a simple and clear language interspersed with enough humor to keep you from going to sleep immediately.

This book is in reference format, it’s not intended to be read from start to finish. Each chapter is self standing so you can go read about your problem of the moment. This book is specifically aimed at the beginner. If you’re looking for something on trouble shooting or some of the esoteric aspects of networking you need something higher up. But if you’re just intending to set up and keep up a small network at home, school or work, this is the best overview I’ve seen.