Data Communications Books

I used this book as a review after having studied the comapnion study guide. Any Exchange text is going to be near a thousand pages--if not more, and a good review text is almost mandatory. This is the best one out there, for sure. Passed the test the first time, and walked out the door with my MCSE!

I managed to pass the 70-081 Exam 1st time after Using this book along with the Sybex Study Guide for Exchange Server(2nd Ed) 5.5 with only ten days worth of study. Its strongest point, as with all Exam Notes Books by Sybex, is it clearly lays out what areas of the exam Microsoft focus' on, allowing you to emphasise your study on those key points. It did, however miss one key point, which was a discussion on firewalls (covered in the study guide) otherwise it would of been 5 stars. My recommendation: This book, the study guide and a small practice network of 3 - 4 computers is all you need to pass the exam.

After passing Server, I used this book, and this book alone to tackle the infamous adaptive exam. The test quit far sooner than I expected it to--so I must have done quite well. It is incredibly well written, and in only 10 days time prepared me for the exam.

I had problems with this book, largely because it relies on your previous knowledge of Exchange and hands-on experience. If you have lot's of that, and are looking for a book that "cuts to the chase", change my 4-star rating to a 5 and buy this book.

If, however, you are like I was... lacking in hands-on experience with Exchange... this book is probably not for you. I purchased the Easlick Sybex Exchange 5.5 book and wanted to use this as a supplement/additional reference. This book does not perform well in that role, because it leaves much information as "exercises to be performed by the reader" or refers you to other Sybex books for great amounts of information.

If you are already an hands-expert with Exchange, this book will probably suit you. Otherwise, I recommend saving your money and sticking to the Easlick Sybex book and the Transcenders.

Thought the book covered most of the questions presented on the actual exam. You can pass the exam by reading this book alone with some additional hands-on practice with NT Server.

This could have been a much better book. It needed more examples (sample HTML code). It is also really out of date now, as you might suspect.

This is not a thick book with everything you want or don't want of HTML. If you want to build or modify your personal web site, or working on a e-commerce site but need some quick reference, or refresh your memory, this is a very handy book to help you to get the things down easier than hold the thick one.

Well, after buying the Instant Javascript book from Wrox, I was hoping to expect the same type of help from this book. And I do have to say I was a bit dissapointed by it. Apparently, they took too much time explaining and going into worthless subjects, instead of grinding the meat with real world examples, usefull tips and tricks, and hopefully some new light on HTML (something that most of the newer WYSIWYG editors don't already do). So, as I have shown, this is not a book you might want to buy for really advanced proyects, or higher learning. If you're a newbie looking to get an understanding at HTML, then this is a book for you.

This book is very clear and concise. Not only is it an awesome reference, but it's simple enough, that a newbie can learn from it. Everything important is bold, in bigger fonts, bulleted etc... very clear, and easy to see when you are looking for something. One of the most useful things about it, is that it shows how something is applied, by giving you examples of code, rather than giving you dry verbiage. If you're a web developer, this book is a must!

Of course, this is dated already, but if you are doing plain vanilla HTML, this is the most perfect HTML guide I've come across, and I have many. Even 3 years after it was published, when I need to look something up, this is the book that comes off the shelf first, and usually the only book that needs t come off the shelf. Which is amazing, considering how small the thing is, too.

It's not the meta-level description device that other HTML books are, so if you want more details on why things are the way they are, then you'll need another book. But if you get stuck and can't remember how to format colors in a table, you'll find it lickity-split in this book, with examples, and helpful clarifications.

If you do any HTML, put this book in your library.

Nutshell review - A fun to read and enjoyable book. Some good scenarios and interesting analysis of various attacks and defences.

While they present this as a work of fiction, there is a large amount of information that can be immediately applied to your own situations. The authors mention that the stories come from real-life experiences or observations, and it is very easy to believe them. This is a great read for any network engineer or network administrator though don't read it at night, case some of the stories can be a little frightening, and you don't necessarily want the nightmares in your sleep.

The Stealing the Network series of books is in a catagory on it's own. Thrilling, entertaining, and fun to read just scratches the surface of these books. I'll recommend this book to anybody, from joe sixpack who only uses the internet for games and pr0n to mitnick himself.

The highly detailed accounts immerse the reader in a truly fantastic series of stories of hackers and their techniques. Remember, the game is a mental one...

_Stealing the Network: How to Own the Box_ has 10 stories with a first person narrator, who is either an attacker, or in two cases, a defender. While the characterization isn't up to the standards of (good) commercial fiction* in most cases, it makes the technical medicine go down easier and gives a picture of who and why people do this stuff. That picture is useful in making an abstraction feel more like a concrete threat.

I think this would be a good intro for a non-technical manager of security staff who needs to know why we have to worry about these things. It's a faster read than Bruce Schneir's admirable _Secrets and Lies_, which is a straight discussion of how to think about security, and probably more rigorous and complete. This offers specific examples and leads to many similar lessons. I will read the next one, How to Own a Continent, when its turn comes up in the queue.

One quibble: for a book published in 2003, with a chapter that mentions Snort a couple of times, I was disappointed in the Laws of Security Appendix. Specifically, the Law that "Any IDS can be Evaded" contains some material that is way out of date. To state that "free ones are starting to come available" at least a decade after Shadow, and at least a couple of years after Snort surpassed proprietary intrusion detection solutions, is a bit, well, weird. Snort is big time - Checkpoint just bought the company that writes it. The two chapters telling a defender's tale refer to Snort.

Also, I'm not convinced of the law's validity. The escalation between intrusion evaders and detectors is an interesting one but I think IDS has the advantage in this go-round. We can detect it, if we're watching the right things. Many of the evasion techniques are themselves alertable!

Apart from that, I found myself nodding in agreement with most of what was said. This taught me some things, and I've read pretty widely. This title is available cheap if you look at used. Check it out.

*It's at least better than Tom Clancy, whose plots are the only thing separating him from pure cheese, the male equivalent of a romance novel.

The writing needs some help -- I understand the newer books are edited by an actual writer to smooth out the prose a bit.
Overall I liked it, there were useful concepts in each hacker's exploit.
The story relating to "H3X", the female hacker was one of the better ones, but had a glaring problem: seeing as I'm not a lonely 14-year-old boy and have had romantic experiences of my own, I really didn't give a crap about the gratutitous, albeit vague, descriptions of her romantic nights out -- it would've been better to just stay on topic.

I'm an electrical engineer and in the Telecomm buisness. I've read a lot of books on communications and this has to be one of the worst, luckily I didn't pay for it. The writing is poor and it doesn't commuicate ideas clearly. There is better books out there on the exact same subject.

A wonderful and essential book for all telecom engineers. It is a great work that should have scored my 5 but for the paper quality.

Review of Communications Systems and Networks by Ray Horak

During the mid 1970's in our Voc Tech High School Data Processing class we were taught that all our information either acquired or given must be Pertinent, Accurate, and Understandable. Or PAU.
Currently a Cisco Networking Student I have many questions about communications systems. This book is more than a PAU resource. With clear explanations and illustrations .From UTP to STP to Coax to Fiber to the Wireless! From LAN's to WAN's to Multi-Media to the WWW. All explained and tied together. Chapter 12 has a section dedicated to the Misuse & Content of the WWW. Also Internet Oddities,Screwball Applications, and Some Really Good Ideas. Each well worth the few minutes it takes to read. Last but not least is the Accronyms, Abbreveations & Symbols Appendix because everyone remembers what VSLEP,JBOD,MEO,and WMBTOTCITBWTNTALI stand for right?
Thank You Ray for balancing the tech language with the human !!!

Communications Systems & Networks gets my 5 star PAU rating!

Communications Systems and Networks by Ray Horak is and excellent resource for anyone in the communication industry, whether experienced or not.

I advise every new person in my group to purchase it and keep it close at hand.

It has been helpful on many occasions when I needed to help an upper level manager understand a technical issue.

There are many telecom books around that try cover as much as topics as possible, this one is no different.
Main advantage of Ray Horak's book is it simplicity, it is very easy to read and understand and organization of the overall text is also quite good. Book also covers fairly large portion of today's telecom world, although, due to the sheer size of the subject, it is lacking in details.
I'd recommend this book for junior (very junior) students or for new-commers in the field.
On the other hand, european engineers should try to avoid this book due its US-centrism. Author mostly ignores European systems or provides very shallow and short reference.

To finalize, good book, but don't ecpect it to make you an expert in the field.

I am an occasional buyer of reference works on software technologies I need to get familiar with, and I teach an evening section at a local area college in object oriented analysis and design. After reading this book, I am actively trying to construct a proposal for a new course based on its contents ... it's that good.

Quite simply, Enterprise Integration Patterns blew me away, on both a technical and pedagogical level. On the technical level, it's all here (except for "aspect" patterns like security, robustness and scalability which would each have really required another book). All the patterns necessary to successfully support asynchronous messaging between groups of remote applications ... which is the basic situation facing anyone trying to do a mashup of web services and / or construct business processes by integrating internal services via an ESB. Even the Process Manager pattern is here.

On a pedagogical level, the material is complete, very easy to read, well illustrated, and above all, well organized. Even a first look at the inside covers reveals this. The front has each of the 60+ patterns listed alphabetically, with its respective icon and 2 sentence paragraph. The back has the patterns (name and icon) clumped into 6 hierarchical "pattern buckets" (Message Endpoints, Message Construction, Message Channels, Message Routing, Message Transformation, and System Management), linked together in a single diagram, showing where the buckets fit when Application A is connected to Application B.

And on both inside covers as well as every place in the text where a pattern is mentioned (quite a bit since patterns are extensively contrasted with each other), the page number where it is defined is given with its name. This makes it very easy to use this book as a reference, because all the patterns it contains are cross-referenced in so many ways.

After an excellent introduction the first chapter explains what a pattern is, what the domain of integration patterns are, and introduces the Widget Manufacturing Company, whose problem grows as tools to handle those problems are introduced.

Bottom line ... I read this book during the two legs of a round trip flight from Chicago to San Francisco, took copious notes within the pages of the book, and walked off the 2nd plane feeling that I had seriously increased my understanding of the entire topic of how to integrate loosely coupled applications.

Not bad ... plus since I snagged an upgrade on the return flight, I can also report that two glasses of wine did not interfere in the slightest with the learning experience. The book is THAT good.

This is the best book I've found that helps to organize the integration space within the industry. This book has helped to organize my thoughts and communicate with others effectively on how to leverage integration patterns. I highly recommend this book to help obtain a foundational understaning of the integration space.

Upon recently changing jobs and focusing on messaging design and architecture, I was steered toward this book by my peers. Without getting into too much detail, before joining my new team, I had never heard of patterns (came from a product support area), much less asynchronous messaging design. Needless to say, this book has been invaluable in my learning process as well as conveying our direction to others.

This book is written in such a way that it is very intuitive. Diagrams help support the concepts and code examples as well.

I would highly recommend this as a must read/reference guide for anyone designing messaging solutions.

This is a fantastic book if you are looking for patterns to base your messaging designs and architecture around. The way this book goes about explaining some of the asynchronous messaging patterns seemed to provide a great deal of benefit to developers and designers who were stuck in the synchronous way of doing things. Great explanations and illustrations, would recommend to anyone researching EAI or ESB technologies or just a more structured, efficient way of messaging in general.

Many books have been written about SOA, but most of them are just about the theory of SOA. It's important for Software Architects and Software Engineers to understand the theory, but just knowing the theory is not enough to develop system utilizing SOA principles.

This book fits nicely to bridge the gap between theory and practice. It contains not only the theory behind the patterns that can be used to design a loosely coupled, scalable system, but also the code in Java and C# on how to implement the pattern to build the system.

If you are serious on building a loosely couple system and strongly believe on the powerful of messaging system to accomplish this task, then you have to read this book from the beginning to the end, it will help you to design the system without reinventing the wheel.

I wrote and past the i-Net+ (1K0-002) today (Mar-5-2004). This book contributed 60% of the content.

Though the questions in the book assisted with the material of the book very very few actually came in the exam.

The book help moreso with understanding the concepts.

The exam was hard... damn hard. I passed with a 83% mark.

used this book along with the cramsession pdf and as many online sample test as possible to study for the i-Net+ cert.

only found one typo in the book and its on the review sheet at the front of the book. the Class A subnet mask lists 116K instead of 16 million.

the questions at the end of the book are much simpler than the actual test questions.

however, you'll get a good idea of the topics to be covered on the test from the book. actually the book covers more topics than the test itself.

you'll find a few semi-verbatim questions on the actual test that the book has simply paraphrased, but that's about it for question similarities.

i'd say this book will help you pass, but don't think it should be your only source for the cert.

good luck.

When the contents of this book are read an memorized it is a certain guarantee for suc6. Spot on the money, but please realize everything is on the exam, and you cannot NOT memorize all of it and hope to get away with it on the exam. (a friend of mine failed that way). I only missed the stuff on CORBA in this little book, but passed easily.

Good exam prep for a pretty easy exam. Even tho its a bit outdated, it does the trick.

I used three different books, and this was the best, by far. It goes into more detail and covers more topics than the other texts I used, and was packed with info. Definitely one to buy!

You must buy if you are beginner, intermedium or advanced in forensic computers.

I read the book in about three days and found it to be a good primer for one leaning towards computer forensics. While some of the technology and tools described in the book will undoubtedly change within the next few months, a lot of the basic principles will remain pertinent for a long time to come. I heartily recommend this book for anyone with more than just a casual interest in Computer Security.

As an attorney and a formally-trained computer forensics examiner and instructor who has been tilling the fields of digital evidence for some time, I'm always on the prowl for the next great computer forensics tool or text that's going to help me find the next smoking gun...or at least be confident I haven't overlooked it. I've built a substantial library of books and articles on computer forensics, some very good and some a complete waste of money. But, this book is the best of the best.

From its step-by-step detail of the forensic process to its copious and helpful illustrations and screen shots to its unvarnished discussion of the tools in the marketplace, the second edition of Incident Response and Computer Forensics is, for my money, the most valuable resource any computer forensic examiner could have on their shelf. Many of the techniques and shortcuts detailed are "trade secrets" in that I've never seen them described in print. Unlike other forensic guides that assume the reader owns a costly forensic software suite, this book fairly splits its emphasis between Linux tools, shareware and the best software packages. That means the reader can begin the learning process at once, without investing anything more than their time and interest.

Another strength is that the book neither presupposes a too-high level of knowledge or experience nor dumbs down its content such that an expert wouldn't derive any value. There's something here for everyone who cares about computer forensics, from the neophyte to the grizzled veteran. When I paid $50.00 for this tome at a big box bookstore, I worried I was paying too much. Now, I'd think it cheap at twice the price.

As another reviewer pointed out, it doesn't devote a chapter to the law, but that is not to say that legal considerations are ignored. To the contrary, I think the authors do an excellent job of giving a useful "heads-up" where needed and not moving out of their depth.

I don't know these guys, but I'd sure like to shake their hands for a job well done! Thanks.

Craig Ball is an attorney and certified computer forensic examiner based in Montgomery, Texas, who teaches and consults with attorneys and the courts on matters of computer forensics and electronic discovery.

I liked this book, but it is scattered in its topics. A lot of the information can be found online, and the tools aren't what we use on a daily basis. I'm not sure if any of them are commercial tools in this book.

I liked File System Forensics by Brian Carrier better. Even though it had a smaller area to cover it provided a better introduction to the area and I could see how it could be used in a class better. Still, this book does have a lot of good content and makes a nice addition.

This is no doubt the best incidence reponse book out. I highly recommend this for anyone either in the field, learning to get into the field, or running a small to medium sized company without a team of experts. My entire network admin team uses this as a reference at the side of their desk.

To start with, this is the only book i read for the exam.
The objective questions at the end of each chapter, are exactly in the format that they appear in the exam. It helps you a lot in having the right mind-set, when you actually face it.
The exam covers exactly the same topics, that are emphasized in the book.

I have read plenty of programming books... ok skimmed. I really wish there was a training guide out there that would show real world scenarios. I didn't care for the examples in this book. I learn best by doing. When I do the work I really wish I could relate using the code in my job. That would assist me in learning it more. The whole cram the book then take the test doesn't work for me.

Very good. I recd. the book on time and condition the book was excellent...

This book is very well organized, has good examples, and is based very closely on the exam objectives. I had co-workers who used the Microsoft (red) books and didn't like them who switched to this one and were much happier. Studying this book and using a Transcender practice test enabled me to pass the 305 exam. Recommended.

This is a valuable book, it explained topics which were missing in some other books. In the other hand, the previous reviews did not mention some shortcomings in this book. The OOP part of this book is not good. The language in many parts of this book is ambiguous, it lures people to read these parts again and again, but after that the meaning is still not clear, while this repeated reading of such a big book wastes time. The sample code in this book is not available for download, although they are in the CD, but the CD is made in a mean way that the "copy" function is disabled, so this book is not good for busy people.

Anyone who has been concerned or is currently concerned with the performance of networks, no matter how large, has had to deal with the TCP/IP protocol. It has its origins in the late 1960's, being invented essentially by government researchers and finally finding its first specification in 1979. This book is written for Unix systems administrators who must deal with the intricacies of TCP/IP but unfortunately does not suggest to them methods for improving TCP/IP performance. It is one thing to administer for convenience and ease in troubleshooting. It is quite another thing to administer for performance. For this reason, this reviewer only read the last chapter in the book, which deals with the troubleshooting of the TCP/IP implementation. A future edition would be greatly improved by detailed discussion of performance issues and how to administer for optimum performance.

The author does however give a fairly detailed discussion of troubleshooting in TCP/IP and give a few hints to assist the beginning sys/ad person. Many of these are readily apparent to those who are acquainted with the dynamics of TCP/IP, while others are based more on a commonsense understanding of how networks are configured. For example, the author advises checking to see if the trouble is unique to only one application or if it only occurs on one remote host versus all remote hosts. Problems that are application specific are to be distinguished from those that may require investigation into the actual network, the latter occurring when hosts are experiencing problems on only certain subnets.

It is interesting that the troubleshooting techniques and tools that are described in this chapter still require a great deal of human intervention, and therefore are dependent on the time restrictions of the network engineer or administrator. These tools include "built-in" investigative ones like `ipconfig', `ping', `traceroute', and `snoop'. Some of these tools unfortunately can also be used to disrupt a network, such as for example when `ping attacks' are used to flood a host with a barrage of ping packets. In addition, many of them can be used to hack into a particular host, or gain information for a successful intrusion into that host's networked computers. Many of them also can be used to gain information on the layers that are below the TCP layer, such as the `arp' command that allows one to analyze problems with translation between IP and Ethernet addresses.

It is not surprising to find discussions on network design in this chapter, and in these discussions one must go deeper into the lower OSI levels. And in these discussions, particularly in the one on how to subdivide an Ethernet in order to manage the network traffic on a particular segment, the author does indirectly discuss performance issues, although they are strictly speaking outside of the TCP/IP protocol, and its sometimes striking and unpredictable behavior on real networks. This complicated behavior of TCP/IP, and the severe financial impact that its maladies can cause for business and industry dictate that a much more sophisticated approach to troubleshooting TCP/IP be used. This approach would deploy a system that responds immediately to TCP problems, analyzes them, and takes correction (on its own if the risks are understood). In addition it would learn from experience, or "keep a historical record' in the words of the author, so as to be able to confront similar problems in the future more efficiently. Having such an autonomous real-time TCP/IP troubleshooter that is not bound by the long time scales characteristic of human intervention would be complex but definitely useful and a huge return on investment.

This book covers the in's and out's of TCP/IP with a Unix focus. Non-Unix users will find this book equally useful as the Unix user, in that it presents the information in a format that is easy to follow as well as comprehensive.

This book doesn't cater to the casual reader, instead it gives the facts required for administration of a TCP/IP based network. If you want to understand this topic, this is the book to use.

This coveres some aspects, and can be used to learn from--but doesn't cover all the aspects that you'll want to know. For a reference, it's pretty good too. It's a pretty decent book, though has a good mix of information that makes it a little better than average.

As with all of O'Reilly's books, this one is technically accurate and fundamentally sound.

It does not teach TCP/IP from a simplistic approach--telling you only what you need to know and leaving you begging for more. It lays a ground work based upon the actual theory of these protocols and how they were developed and the thinking that was involved in their creation.

From there, it takes you step by step through the layers of the protocols and presents everything that most people would need to know--even more than they would need to know.

Especially enlightening were the chapters on IPv6--the next generation of the IP protocol, and the chapter covering subnetting.

Overall, if you need the one book to explain TCP/IP and the "ins-and-outs" of these networking protocols, look no further.

This book has all you'll need.

Though this book is oriented to UNIX, I find it tremendously useful as a Windows administrator. Core concepts gleamed from this book has catapulted me greatly into my career, and allowed me to solve complex networking problems and avert major disasters.

I was introduced to this book for a UNIX Network Administration course, and from this I was able to really flesh out core TCP/IP concepts as well as play with services like DHCP and DNS, which are essential pieces for a Windows Active Directory environment. Using this book I was able to dabble with other services like NFS and SAMBA from a variety of systems ranging from Mac OS X to Solaris x86 to Linux to Windows XP...

I don't have any complaints, but rather some requests for future editions. I wish there was some coverage of IPSec and Kerberos in Chapter 12 "Network Security". I think Chapter 9 "Local Netowrk Services" could be expanded, as some topics are sparsely covered and there is no mention of printing technologies like IPP or CUPS. I do wish there was more coverage of the raw SMTP protocol and related technologies of POP, IMAP, and LDAP and maybe even mail servers like Exim and Postfix. However, don't touch that sendmail chapter (Chapter 10), as this coverage is so very excellent; other books go off on the deep end are far way too complex to get started.

This is a good book to use in addition to other books (study guides). I read this book cover to cover first, then read the Windows NT Workstation 4 book by Dennis Maione ISBN #1-56205-918-1, then I read it agian. I took the test I was done in a half hour and passed with a 866! YMMV ;)

Would recommend highly, but is it " The first and last book you need to read", a little puffery there, you do need *more*, good luck, I did it, you can too.

I used this book as the last piece of my studying. I read a Dummies book and used a CBT course. This book was the only one that was close to the exam. The questions in the book were structured just like questions in on the adaptive test. This is an excellent book to refine and enhance knowledge needed to pass.

I just passed the Network Essentials Exam with the help of this wonderful study resource. I also used the Microsoft Official Curriculum and this book did alot to clarify some of the material. A super resource! Use it!

After reading this book, i went to sit the Networking Essentials Adaptive exam. I was out of the exam in 7 minutes with a pass.

Need I say anymore.. Absolutely fantastic!

This book is a great example of how to write a study guide for an MCSE exam. I believe that out of the many Exam Cram titles I have used to date - this one covers the intended material the best. The language is just technical enough to be professional, yet not overwhelming. The diagrams and tables are very useful and as far as I have seen - error free. One word of caution - I do not recommend using this book alone to pass the exam. I also bought the Microsoft Press MCSE Core Exam pack which includes the Net Essentials course - the Net Essentials course can also be bought as a stand alone course. At any rate - two very good resources - and when combined with the Exam Cram Net Essentials book they make an unbeatable study combination. Net Ess Transcender exams are also a great addition - but I wouldn't use them as a crutch in lieu of hard study time or you'll be dissapointed! The Exam Cram and Microsoft books are no substitute for experience, but if you do not have much - they certainly do more than just help you on your way. To sum it up - EXCELLENT BOOK! Passed on first try! Would not take the test without this book!