Operating Systems Books

I was in a book store and I was attracted to the title and the cover color. I picked up the book and read the jacket and I was hooked. I hardly ever buy non-technical books -especially non-fiction. But I was hooked after reading the jacket so I bought the book and assiduously read and enjoyed it. Also I am a Wharton alumnus. I also took classes with Len Lodish.

Eric Ericsson

The book spells out tips for starting a business (use credit cards instead of banks) and the mistakes the authors made along the way (when do you enter the market). You can even contact them after reading and talk to them about your ideas. The encouraging aspect of the book is that while they are starting their business, they spoke to their classmates who were making $200,000 on wall street and working for the dot-coms, but John and Kyle were not discouraged. I am happy that they were able to take an idea like a computer mouse shaped like a gold club and turn it into THEIR company. Congrats guys!

There is so much in this book that I can relate to, having started my own company around the same time in Silicon Valley (although in software). John and Kyle made the same mistakes that many entrepreneurs thankfully make - they followed their passion instead of their senses, and didn't buckle under the pressure and the unknown. One other valuable lesson from this book -- document your process. This is a great way to share your successes and your mistakes with others. I wish we had more stories like this when I was working on my MBA - something more than the dry, non-applicable case studies stuck in front of us. And John and Kyle also provided one other important gem: how to save a few bucks a month at the neighborhood gym. Thanks guys.

The Mousedriver Chronicles is the story of 2 Wharton MBA's who take a business plan developed on their entrepreneurship course at Wharton and decide to make a go of it. In 1999 they turn away high paying jobs at investment banks and over funded dot.com startups to go it alone.

Their idea: to make and sell a computer mouse that looks like the head of a golf driver.

They fund the venture themselves, find a manufacturer in Hong Kong, move to San Francisco (to be part of all the start up vibe in The Bay area) and run the business from the kitchen of their rented flat.

Their story is brilliantly relayed as they grapple with manufacturing, marketing and distribution hassles. The single product focus of their new company, named Platinum Concepts Inc., makes for a wonderful entrepreneurial story with excellent lessons about what it takes to succeed as a self funded start up. The two founders quickly learn that they need more than the theoretical knowledge acquired on their MBA at Wharton; they need to be street wise. They experiment with different mechanisms to make things happen and end up categorizing their execution strategies as follows:
Plan A: Make use of their business school network and contacts
Plan B: Hit the streets and the shops to find a creative solution
Plan C: Work the Yellow Pages

More often than not, plan B and C worked far better than plan A.

One of the founders, John Lusk, began sharing their entrepreneurial adventure with friends and family via a monthly email called "The Insider". The Insider was a real, often humorous, sometimes highly insightful newsletter about their adventure. The insider subscriber list grew and grew. MBA lecturers began distributing The Insider as prescribed reading. In 2001 Inc. Magazine featured a cover story on the company and its two founders. The Inc. cover story entitled "An American Start-up" focuses on the impact of The Insider e-mail newsletter. The email newsletters were used as the foundation for the book published in 2001 entitled The "Mousedriver Chronicles".
The company has since been shut down but the Mousedriver website still serves as a portal for entrepreneurs and copies of The Insider newsletter can be found in PDF format on the website: www.mousedriver.com

MouseDriver is about two guys who graduate from Wharton with MBAs in 1999 (the heart of the internet boom) and start a business manufacturing and selling a computer mouse that looks like the head of a driver golf club, turning down high paying jobs at dotcoms, investment banks, consulting firms etc.

As a small business consultant (Transcendence Consulting, LLC tcllc.net) I can tell you right now that if you are looking to start a busines, buy this book TODAY. It is an amazing look at the entire process of starting a business, from the ability to jump head first, manage yourself during
the highs and lows, deal with self doubt and solve an endless supply of problems. It is an easy read that will take you no time at all to complete.

Thick Oracle book which is intended for developers who might need to understand the Oracle internals and administration parts besides writing SQL. It's useful for them working in other database also as the general database concept is simlar. Developers can now have more DBA knowledges after reading before on-going performing some DBA task.

Gr8 stuff for all the Oracle ppl.

A true masterpiece, and a great way to learn Oracle concepts. No more to say.

I have been an Oracle DBA for about six years and this book is still the one I turn to when looking for deeper insight into tough Oracle problems. The author recently published a new book on 9i and 10g and that one is also quite excellent. When it comes to analysis and clear writing style, no one can beat Tom Kyte for excellence. Highly recommended.

I bought this book on cheap clearance after the original publisher went out of business -- the best $12 I ever invested. Remembering even 10% of this book makes you better than 90% of Oracle developers, modelers and architects. Mr. Kyte's real world experience and reliance on solid examples instead of folklore makes this light-years ahead of any other Oracle book; it's the only Oracle book I re-read regularly. If you can afford only one Oracle book, this is it. And you may not need any other.

Firstly a warning, this is the second edition and covers Windows 2003. There is a third edition that covers the newer OS. I bought this book by mistake and it's too big (postage would be too expensive) to return. So buy with care.

This is a big book in terms of pages but the content is less than stellar. Don't expect to find too much on designing AD in real world situations such as integration with networking topologies and devices. Nor expect to find details on integrating AD with other Microsoft technology such as SharePoint. No this cookbook is really an administrator companion, and I think it does a pretty decent job in that but not more.

Very handy cookbook reference for my office bookshelf. I've used it a number of times, and it's more than paid for itself in expediting regularly-scheduled inquiries of our AD structure here at GEICO HQ.

Excellent reference if you work with AD on a regular basis either as an admin or a developer. Each "how to" offers methods for manually performing a specific task as well as (where possible) how to automate the task using code. Should be on every Windows admin/developer's desk.

Overall, this is a great book for reference.

There are a number of areas where I think the book falls short - all of the scripts are very hard coded scripts that don't tell you how to do some functions that would make their scripts actually useful (like "pull the list of users with attributes from a tab-delimited file and create them" or something similar, this would make mass creation of users actually useful, instead of "create user1, user2, user3, etc..."). I think that the writers expect you to be a VB expert (or at least close to it) if you're going to actually make the vb scripts useful.

Most of the scripts are "How to use a script to do the same functions that you can already do in AD with ADUC or another MMC", but I think that the most important thing for me about the book is what it inspires me to think of doing. Things that MS doesn't necessarily expect you to do. I'm still not seeing a way to add sidHistory to an object (MS does it with another applet - there is a way...), but there are so many things in the book that just have me thinking about how you can implement changes to an environment that MS says you can't do. What they really mean is "You can't do that with the GUI tools that we provide you".

I am so glad that this book was recommended to me by a guy I took a class on scripting from. I use this book everyday (almost). I even took it on vacation with me for light reading.

This is thought provoking and great for stimulating thought about the way you want to present information at your next meeting.....great read, great ideas and will be using it as a reference book!

In the foreword, Guy Kawasaki said "So open your wallet. And buy it. Then open your mind. And read it. Then open your heart. And do it". I think you should do that with this book, and maybe before that check the presentation of the author at google:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ2vtQCESpk

just to have a taste of the book.

Within half a day after receiving this book I included some of the principles it describes into my presentation. The results are truly remarkable, my thoughts come across much more powerful. Also people smiled after my presentation saying where did you learn to present like this, fun, entertaining and meaningful !

For years I've been urging my clients (I'm an Executive Speech Coach) to visually simplify the message... and now I have the perfect book to backup my request - Presentation Zen! Garr Reynolds is a master at presentation design - his ability to distill the message and reduce the visual slide noise is invaluable. A must read for every speaker who wants to learn to create a visually impactful presentation.

I am a scientist, and I have given hundreds of presentations. I was hoping that this book would be applicable, but it is not. Somehow, the "professional stock photos" suggested cannot convey scientific data. There were no substantive suggestions or guidelines in this book.

Perhaps if you are a motivational speaker "I live in a van by the river" this would be useful.

If you are required to give presentations that convey data (experimental results, financial data) skip this book.

Sorry I wasted my money,
Teresa

I recently purchased this book based on the rave reviews even with an updated second edition off the press. I can honestly say that this book is Awesome in detail and explanation and is still extremely relevant to understanding the how too's and processes involved in routing tcp/ip. The most amazing feature about this book is how well explained and the book makes topics that would normally seem dificult or confusing easily understood, in other words grandma could learn how routing tcp/ip works from reading this book!

Brandon, Rome, GA

Great book for understanding IGP in details.

If any book was ever considered as the MUST HAVE BIBLE for Interior Routing Protocols - then Jeff Doyle's first effort on IGPs is THE book (how many cliché's do you want in one sentence)!! The book goes through at a very even pace - dissecting and describing the majority of both open-standard IGPs (OSPF, RIP and a little on ISIS) and Cisco-proprietary IGPs (IGRP and it's beefier brother - EIGRP). The book also includes some invaluable appendixes - including tutorials on working with Binary and hex.

But let's focus on the book's main reason for being - explaining IGPs. Take for instance OSPF - one of the most popular and widely implemented routing protocols in use today. On page 416-417, the book correctly discusses virtual links as a type of network type. The OSPF chapter typically employs 5-8 routers (and shows the required configs). Such a daunting exercise may at first seem like overkill, but Doyle is able to show how (and why) the all these router configs are necessary (to show, for instance, how they interact with or whether a DR or BDR). The book does have it's typos though, as the table on page 484 incorrectly documents stub networks as allowing type 5 and 7 LSAs (not so - thus a stub!)

I cannot imagine there are many CCIEs out there that do not have this book on their bookshelf.

I give this book 5 pings out of 5:
!!!!!

I am reviewing Routing TCP/IP Volume 1 (ISBN 1578700418), part of the CCIE Professional Development Series from Cisco Press. This book is widely regarded as part of the "Holy Trinity" of CCIE preparatory books. In addition to CCIE prep, it is also highly valued as an essential desk reference for anyone pursuing a career as a senior-level routing engineer. The author, Jeff Doyle, having written the two most recognized tomes on IP Routing, is a respected authority on the topic. His writing style is very clear and not at all difficult to read, which sets him apart from a lot of the authors in the "high-end routing book" category.

The book is part of a set of two books. TCP/IP Volume 1 contains coverage of the major interior routing protocols (RIP, IGRP, EIGRP, OSPF & ISIS) and follows it with coverage of route redistribution, filtering and mapping. TCP/IP Volume 2 covers the BGP exterior gateway protocol and follows it with coverage of advanced IP routing issues. As someone who's come up through the CCNA-to-CCNP-to-CCIE-candidate path, I recognized all of the topics from the BSCI curriculum. All this book really does is takes them to another level of depth. I highly recommend this path of coming at the CCIE, because unless you've done it all and seen it all, there's way too much information to take in during a single reading. Reading the BSCI book first gets you familiar with all of the topics, so that you're not overwhelmed when reading the Doyle books.

While many pan this book as being outdated since it was written in 1998, my contention is that all of the covered topics are still fair game for the CCIE qualifying written exam and the book still retains all of its original value. There are a lot of topics which are on the test which are not in Doyle's books, but if you look at the CCIE blueprint, the topics covered in the books map exactly to the topics in the IP Routing & IP Multicast sections of the blueprint. You can't treat any book as being a one stop shop for CCIE preparation. That's impossible. The book would be the size of my desk. I would actually contend that, on the next rewrite, they should break the 2 volume set into 3 volumes, one for the interior protocols, one for BGP by itself, and one for all of the advanced routing issues and multicast. This would make the volumes a bit less daunting and also somewhat easier to carry.

But, carry-ability issues aside, this is a very good book. It takes all of the topics to the degree of depth which you would expect for a CCIE-level book and explains things in a way that doesn't lose the reader. I had to work to keep the examples straight in my head, but no one said becoming a CCIE was easy. On the downside, the book contains no disc. This is unfortunate, because I always like to have the book on PDF. Also, it would be nice to have the review questions and answers put into a question bank. The book is also missing the "Do I Know This Already" section for each chapter, which is present in all of Cisco Press' certification guides. I realize that this is probably due to the fact that this is more of a desk reference / learning book than an official certification guide. However, as someone who's studying for an exam, I always like as many free practice questions as I can get.

I give Routing TCP/IP Volume 1 a 5 on my 5 ping rating scale and look forward to reading Volume 2.
!!!!!

Routing TCP/IP Volume 1 by Jeff Doyle (ISBN 1578700418) is an advanced level book on the theory and practice of routing and its implementation in Cisco routers. The 1026-page book (with a 50+ page index - always an important part of any technical book) is packed with useful information, example network architectures, and sample commands and their corresponding outputs to help the reader get a thorough grasp of real-life application of the theory.

The book is meant for working professionals in the network and routing field. Part I presents some basic routing theory along with the routing types - static and dynamic. This section, as in other books, is meant as a review for those seasoned engineers who have been working in the field for some time. It also helps to bring up to speed the other readers who may lack the necessary background. Part II contains the real substance of the book. It covers the interior routing protocols in detail including RIP 1 & 2, IGRP, EIGRP, OSPF, and IS-IS. The material presented in these chapters is definitely solid enough to give a detailed understanding of the subject matter and provide the necessary knowledge to allow one to troubleshoot the problems that creep up in maintaining networks running these routing protocols. Part III presents the issue relating to the optimization of networks running these routing protocols such as filtering and redistribution. Part IV consists of the appendices.

The most useful part of the book in my opinion is the examples and sample outputs. These really help the reader to understand the details on implementing the concepts presented in the book. Jeff presents a sample network architecture and uses that architecture to explain various aspects of the topic being discussed. For example, to illustrate various aspects of EIGRP routing and load balancing, a 5-router mesh architecture is presented followed by a detailed discussion of concepts such as succession, load sharing, route transitions and updates, etc. This approach really helps in understanding all aspects of a particular topic with concrete examples to relate to.

I took hold of this book not to help in preparing for the CCIE but to assist in the understanding of routing protocols that I use in my work life. As such, I can not comment on the applicability of this book to preparing for the CCIE exam but as for its application to real world scenarios, this book far exceeds any other on the topic of routing in the Cisco environment.

I am really impressed with the material presented in this book. The book is thorough and detailed in its coverage of interior routing protocols. Jeff Doyle is an expert in his field and this book proves it. On a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the highest, I give an enthusiastic 5 to Routing TCP/IP Volume 1 by Jeff Doyle. I can't wait to get my hands on Volume II.

All the features of WPF are explained here, with samples and visual codes for your reference. I decided to buy this book and other about Blend 2, but most of my doubts I solved with this edition.
Great book from beginners to experts.

Hey, a programming book in full colour!! WPF Unleashed really does introduce the concepts and details of WPF programming in a clear and easy manner, and Adam Nathan is to be commended for his efforts. Anyone wanting to learn (more) about WPF will benefit from this book.

This is a well written, well structured book.

Full color with good examples and covers a good range of details.

What can I say.. I was looking for a book about WPF. I saw many, and many until I found that one. Then I stopped looking for more :)

On first opening this book you are struck by the beautiful full colour pictures and syntax-highlighted code samples. [Though the experience was slightly marred by the tears and damage to the front cover which occurred during shipping, as was also the case with another book in the order.]

I did a quick flip through and thought... "Beautiful presentation, but the content looks a bit over-simplified. Maybe all the reviewers were seduced by the full colour pages."

Then I started working my way through the book. I was blown away. The writing style is simple and to the point. But it doesn't lack depth. There are indications of the little things that are likely to catch you out, as well as discussions of some pretty advanced topics too.

So, Yay! The content of the book was just as good as the way it was presented, if not better. My only criticism is that in some cases there could have been more code examples.

On the other hand this would probably have made the book very bloated and not as useful as a reference book. There's enough information to point you in the right direction, and from there google will get you to all the code samples you need.

So let O'Reilly do the cookbook style books with lots of code snippets. They do that so well. This book takes a novel approach, and it works brilliantly!

I bought the first edition of this book called Programming Windows Presentation Foundation (AKA Avalon) at the PDC in 2005 and read it completely on the plane home.

When I heard the second edition was released I didn't think much would have changed, but this is even better than the first edition. It's twice as big and covers all major (and not so major) topics in WPF (inc. an introduction to 3D and Silverlight).

I think this book will proof to be for WPF what Programming Windows, Fifth Edition is for WIN32 programming.

This book is the most in depth resource into WPF i have seen. And not just that, it gets to the good stuff that you'll actually use in your code and not just filler or lists of properties that you can get from intelisense. The examples are extremely useful.

The other benefit of this book is that it doesn't just tell you how to do things, but why. This is incredibly helpful in finding the best solution to your specific problem.

Thanks guys! great book!
Ralph

I say to ignore those reviews because they do not refer to this book. This is the second edition published August 28, 2007 with 863 pages. Those reviews are based off of the first edition published nearly two years before (September 12, 2005) and with only 447 pages.

Using Amazon's 'Search inside this book' takes you to the 2005 edition also. That shows only 10 chapters while this edition has 17. Most of the negative comments from the 2 and 3 star reviewers seem to have been resolved.

The biggest strength of this book is that it focus on using WPF programatically, not just laying out XAML. This is extremely useful if you are writing an application for 3D data visualization or a database driven application. You get to learn to create event handlers, generate meshes... all programmatically. I also believe that this book is great, not just as a learning tool, but as a reference guide. It is the most comprehensive book on the subject and a must for the aspiring WPF developer.

If you just want to focus on XAML, however, I will have to recommend "Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed" by Adam Nathan.

As a software developer I've written tons of production-level code for many companies including Rockwell Automation, Compuware, MS.
And I found this book to be too shallow for a technical person like me.

[One can save money by simply downloading WPF SDK samples and learning them]

Can one design and implement a better than WPF framework after reading this book? Obviously not!

No wonder, the authors never developed significant portions of any known product/framework!

Also, my e-mail exchange with C. Sells indicates that he himself doesn't really understand WPF in depth.
(BTW, as a MS employee he has luxury of having access to WPF source code and symbols - he obviously didn't bother to do so)

Just a few examples:
-- Managed/Unmanaged transition, e.g. the MIL stuff
-- Lack of understanding the WPF control model
-- Lack of understanding the WPF text model
-- Just like in any other *shallow WPF book* [are there deep WPF books out there?] authors make no effort to scrutinize the existing framework (WPF). [Which is definitely far from being clean and nice]
-- WPF "GDI-free" claims are nonsense since WPF uses User32 and User32 and Gdi32 libs are tightly coupled.

I have a friend that recommended me this book and I have to agree with him that this was a very well written book. Don't let the fact that the title says "Windows NT" discourage you from getting this book. There is a lot of useful information in this book that is still standard practice for scripting in Server 2003. Probably one of the few and only outdated commands in the book is the AT command that was replaced by SCHTASK. Even then, the author goes into detail on how these different commands work and how to use them in your work environment to you benefit. I recommend this book as a learning tool and as a reference for my fellow scripting brethren.

Great book on NT shell commands that Microsoft doesn't even document. Not even "command /?" gives you any help.

Great for reference and to learn.

Although this book was authored in 1998, it is still as relavent today with Windows Server 2003 as it was when Windows NT 4.0 was first released. The fact is that the Command Shell hasn't changed all that much over the years and Timothy Hill's book remains the best guide to using and writing command scripts that I could ever recommend. And with Windows Server 2003's push to be able to do everything from the command line that one can do from the GUI, it's even more important to fully understand how the Windows Command Shell works.

Windows NT Shell Scripting is less about Windows NT than it is about how to write shell scripts. It covers the details of using the Command Shell in interactive mode, its configuration and how the 32-bit Command Shell differs from the 16-bit DOS box. Then it delves into the structure and syntax of the Command Shell language, providing a clear understanding of how the program control features such as IF and FOR work. Finally, it shows you how to create sophisticated shell scripts using the internal commands and external command-line utilities included with Windows and their Resource Kits.

Not everything in this book has survived the test of time. The old task scheduler using the AT command, though still supported in current version of Windows, has been mostly replaced by more powerful Scheduled Tasks of Windows 2000 and later. And you will want to supplement this book with a modern reference of the utility programs available for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 (such as OReilly's "Windows Server 2003 In A Nutshell"). Yet this represents only a small part of the book and majority of material stands up very well. Certainly there is no better and more in-depth tutorial for building command scripts than Timothy Hill's book.

I like this book because unlike many technical books, the first three chapters aren't a pedestrian introduction to the basic fundamentals. This book spends chapter 1 with insight, similar to the way Applied Cryptography immediately gives you knowledge. I'm an experienced NT command shell user, and this book was valuable for me as well.
The DOS shell has become a requirement and skill relegated to the background by the direction of Microsoft curriculum, this book explains it and teaches it.

The authors instructions are easy to follow, without doting like the Teach Yourself "whatever" in 24 hour books, Tim Hill doesn't waste your time, or your money.

If you have a bit of programming experience, this book together with access to the NT Resource Kit tools will provide you with the foundation for doing almost anything you could imagine within Windows NT Shell Scripting.

The book can be used both as a tutorial and a reference for Windows NT scripting and gives good examples of the commands, tools and concepts covered. For Windows NT, this book does the job as your Shell Scripting Bible in less than 400 pages.

Since Windows NT 4.0, a lot has happened in the Windows scripting field though. With the release of Windows 2000 and the subsequent Windows XP and .NET Server, shell scripting has become much more powerful. A second edition of this book covering the new commands and tools would be most welcome. Until one exists, you might also want to look at newer books covering shell scripting for operating systems based on the Windows NT kernel.

You might also want to look at other, often more powerful ways to script your Windows NT-based environment. For that matter I recommend looking at other books covering WSH (Windows Script Host), ADSI and WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation).

This is a really great book on BGP and Internet Architecture. The explanation of BGP at the protocol level is great. More importantly though is its explanation and examples of using eBGP / iBGP with an IGP.

I've heard it criticized as being dated and too Cisco specific. Though it is Cisco specific, it's still very relevant. I would start with this book and read past NANOG presentations on introductory BGP if I wanted to learn how the Internet works.

Internet Routing Architectures is considered the BGP4 handbook and rightfully so. I found the overall composition easy to read. Even though the book is aimed at varying levels of expertise, it does not assume any level of knowledge in TCP/IP or routing. It explains all the concepts, from the simplest one right up to the most demanding, in a fluent way. The book works hard not to withhold protocol details and design-oriented information, while at the same time realizing that building general understanding comes first. An in depth look at BGP is supplied here from the theory aspect, if you need actual configurations and commands I suggest also:

Cisco BGP-4 Command and Configuration Handbook : CCIE Professional Development

This is a good book, let there be no doubt about it. But in my opinion it goes beyond the scope of the 682-661 exam for which purpose I bought it. However, every ISP backbone routing engineer should have this book with him and use it as a dictionary in case of.

This is the best BGP-4 book out there in preparation for the CCIE. Do not waste your money on others this is the one that you need. It takes you from the beginnings of the Internet to the current uses of the protocol. This book is a must have.

I have always felt that I am part of the small minority that just does not see the beauty of this book if studying for the CCIE. I have, for years, read other's comments on the how Halabi's "Internet Routing Arch" is a `must have', yet I still have not found a similar reason why. While I do feel that the book does (probably) the best job at explaining BGP and how to implement BGP in a Cisco-centric world, I have not discovered the value for the CCIE. I would much rather spend my time with CiscoPress's "Routing TCP/IP" Volume 2, by Jeff Doyle and Jennifer DeHaven Carroll than this book.

One item of concern, there is a noticable amount of trivial errors in this book that can lead to disaster if implemented incorrectly. For example:

Page 106 - "...any traffic that has an origin OR destination that does not belong to the local AS." This clearly should be an AND, not OR.

Page 315 - "You can also specify a PREFIX list..." - I believe this should be a filter list, not a prefix list.

And then there are places where the book is too opinionated - for example - page 206 "Many operators choose to filter dynamically learned defaults to avoid situations in which traffic ends up where it is not supposed to be." I do not feel this is true, and can think of multiple times when not filtering the advertised default route may just end up being the worst option. In fact, I do not feel either configuration is the right configuration to admit or condone, as the wrong configuration can have disastrous effects.

I still have to give this book 4 stars - simply because of it's utilitarian value and overwhelming sense of loyalty given to this book by others. But I don't reach for this book too often.

I give this book 4 pings out of 5:
!!!.!

Many networking books I read (or other books on similarly technical subjects) have a tendency to get bogged down in technical minutia that distracts from the big picture. Not so here. Cormer does an excellent job of getting all the important information out there and explains the common networking protocols, what goes into them, and what they do, without losing the reader. Do not think that this is a superficial view though - I've been in the field for several years now and still use it as a reference on occasion.

I purchased the book titled: Internetworking with TCP/IP Vol.1: Principles, Protocols, and Architecture (4th Edition)for a class. The book arrived ahead of schedule, marking the service amazon provided as second to none. Keep up the great work.

Look for the 5th edition of this same book.
4th edition is much older than the newer 5th edition.

I knew nothing about TCP/IP. As a result, I bought a book "learn TCP/IP in 24 hours" and trashed it after I bought this book, no more 24 hour books. I had no idea what routing is and were to start looking for documents on the internet. This book is scientific and puts it all together. Each chapter lists the RFC that he relied on so you know were the stuff came from. The book is not boring; the author is excellent in explaining ideas. He covers ICMP, GGP, OSPF, EGP, DHCP, DNS, BOOTP, ARP and more. I feel I have accomplished something big by reeading this book. If you are not a beginner in routing, then look at the RFCs they are the source.

Want to really, really, really know TCP-IP???

Read this book and you will know it cold.