Data Communications Books

Chris Lewis and Steve Pickavance's SELECTING MPLS VPN SERVICES: A GUIDE TO USING AND DEFINING VPM SERVICES is a winner for Cisco network techs working on routing networks. Professionals will appreciate the chapters which review technical issues involved in IP addressing, routing and convergence and will also appreciate the pro/con analysis of various systems and options, the description of how to executive a network migration to an IP VPN relay system, and how to make the right moves. Chris Lewis has over 18 years experience in networking in general and Cisco in particular and currently works as a projects systems engineer in the Cisco Worldwide group: his back lends perfectly to a technical survey network engineers will find specific enough to serve as a foundation guideline.

The book is mostly discussed about shape representation that used for image processing or computer vision. It has good explanation regarding basic mathematical concepts with very simple numerical example for each concept. The explanation about image descriptors is clear for self study. The book however is not recommended for people who has knowledge already about the basic image processing and computer vision because not so much new things can be found in this book that are not explained in other similar books.

This book is fantastice. It starts basic and moves rapidly along to practical filter design. 100's of examples are given on the enclosed disk (in Matlab .m files). This means the reader can tinker around with each example until he understands the details. You can use the .m files to build your own simulations and filters. This is an excellent reference for the working engineer, or as a tutorial for the working engineer who needs to come up to speed on DSP.

The only draw back is YOU NEED MatLab to full utilize this book. If you are a student, you can pick up the acedemic version of MatLab for around $100. This works fine.

Stearns and David did our profession a big favor by writing this book. Thanks guys!

This book is very expensive, but worth it. It very clearly explains
the important aspects of the protocols and standards that
define packet telephony today: SS7, IP, SIP, H.323 and a bunch
of others. But it also explains how they all fit together,
and why they exist in the first place. There are a lot of
technical books like this that walk you through the details of
the protocols, but aren't written all that well. I think that
this book is beautifully written. Stafford has a real ability to
write clearly yet expressively. This is a very technical
book - I'm not saying that it is flowery or affected in any way.
Its just that it is very clear and a pleasure to read. One
nit: Stafford went a little overboard with scare quotes, a
pet peeve of mine. Not enough to put a dent in his five stars
though.

Very thorough book. Well paced, with good grounding section on the history and technological components. The sample applications are good, if somewhat limited. A followup site on the Web with more examples and a discussion group would be of GREAT use.

Jon's book fills a void in the network management space. This is an essential reference for those looking for information on building a management system. Many useful hints. We used many of these ideas while I was working for a large internet service provided.

This book is a collection of papers that address the full spectrum of testing issues and challenges in rapid development/rapid deployment environments. Although the title implies that this book is about quality and testing of web applications, many of the papers go well beyond that narrow scope.

The papers are divided into five categories:

(1) Managing for Optimal Time to Market. This categories contains an obligatory paper on high-speed web testing, which does address the key challenges. However, two of the papers are exceptional: Using QA for Risk Management in Web Projects drives home the relationship between QA and project risk, and Establishing Quality Procedures for Incremental Software Development is essential reading for anyone who needs to integrate testing into methodologies such as the Rational Unified Process or any other incremental/rapid development approach.

(2) Processes. This section of the book has papers covering topics ranging from how to use Extreme Programming to manage project risks to adapting test processes to web applications. In many respects the papers in this section capture the essence of the book's theme.

(3) Testing from the User's Perspective. This is my favorite section, especially the papers on business oriented testing for e-commerce and the paper titled "Strategic Testing: Focus on the Business". All of the material here reinforces my own experience and observations, and clearly shows the relationships among meeting business requirements, quality and project success.

(4) Technical Testing. Test professionals will get the most from this section because it provides techniques. My favorite is "Securing E-Business" because this important aspect of testing is usually given superficial treatment (if it's covered at all) in most testing books. Another paper I liked in this section is "The Back-End Side of Web Testing: Integration of Legacy Systems", which is applicable to enterprise application integration and e-business system testing. In addition to papers on testing techniques, other aspects of quality are covered in this section, such as performance monitoring (more aligned to capacity planning and performance management than testing, but certainly applicable to quality and service level management).

(5) Test Automation Techniques and Tools contains a single paper titled "Automated Testing of mySAP Business Processes". If you're involved in web-enabled ERP or portal quality this paper is a treasure.

Although this book is an anthology, the topics and editing make it coherent and focused. It is not a book that covers quality or testing as a unified methodology. If you're seeking such a book read "Quality Web Systems: Performance, Security, and Usability" by Elfriede Dustin, Jeff Rashka and Douglas McDiarmid does go into details and is one of the best books on end-to-end web systems quality.

I told you in yesterday's staff meeting to quit writing these books and get back to work. I knew I should have kept Ray around to keep everyone in line. You know that I love you baby. Keep up the good work and let's beat those SAP guys.

The book reviews the use of artificial life techniques in solving a wide range of problems in high performance computing and mobile computing.
The approaches are an interesting and fresh look at how new solution methodologies can be applied to deal with complex
problems in the areas of parallel and mobile computing.

I would highly recommend the book to any researcher who is
interested in experimenting with new ideas and probably contemplating the use of a-life methods.

This book is a self contained, well organized and well presented
reference on MIMO communication systems. Authors have analyzed the subject within the matrix algebraic context.
In exception of few typo errors(that have already been corrected
by the authors) presentation of the subject is flawless and straightforward to follow.
The unified framework for analyzing the subject provides the reader with a big picture of the subject.
I recommend this book for any one who wants to learn about the space-time coding.