hard to imagine a easier -to- read book that is still useful?
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Summary (i.m.h.o)
This is the type of book that fills in areas you may need to know in order to do more adventurous tasks with your computer.
General idea of the book
The general idea with this book is to explain general concepts, then apply lots of explicit text explanations how to use the tools relating to this background knowledge within your computer network. For example, the OSI reference model is explained in the briefest way, but this is then used to breakdown, list and explain the methodology of creating a general network. And the equipment at the time of writing required to make it happen is explained well. You may already know quite a bit about safer computing, but it's still nice to see it down in print to remind the reader.
Personally useful area
What you get out of this book may depend on what you do not already understand? Personally I found book 5, 'TCP/IP and the Internet' useful and revealing. It covered useful stuff on ftp, TCP/IP tools, and DNS that I have not seen in one book before in such a way that proved relevant, engaging and easy to grasp.
The later sections tended to concentrate of servers in a way that may be less useful to those already running networks.
Conclusions
This book is well designed to help users to reach their computer goals that are outside the remit of this book.
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A Good Beginners Book
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I bought this book because I joined a networking company. My job was to sell their software and some of their services.
I had some basic knowledge of unix from a long time ago, so I needed a good basic book to explain all the technical terms in plain language.
This book does it perfectly. It is not designed for experts, it is designed for beginners (dummies, like me). I understand that it was short on detail, but there is still enough in its 800 pages to give the reader a very good overview.
I started reading it from page 1, and managed to get to over 400 before I pulled out and started using it as a reference manual.
Its well written, in english terms, the author has a nice sense of humour. I fully recomend it for people wanting to get a good introduction to a complex topic.
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A simple "how to" book
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I could not use this book when setting up my homenetwork. I found more information on the internet about for instance conflicts when running nbtstat tool; which this book offer no solution or explanation to.
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Good stuff if you want to learn
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This book has just about everything you need to get your foot in the door of basic networking.
You have (comprehensive) introductions to TCP/IP, Wireless, DNS, DHCP, network OS and even some Linux for the real geeks.
I would recommend this to those who have an interest but not a complete picture of networks and their configuration.
Perhaps not for those who are studying for a qualification but more for people who will actually be building their own network(s).Well done to Doug Lowe.
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Good but basic
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This book was a good BRIEF introduction to networking for an absolute beginner.
I had no knowledge of networking and the book helped explain, the basic concepts and protocols at a very high-level.
However, once you advance past the beginners' stage the book is not detailed enough and in many sections it feels as though you have been left dangling with only part of the story.
I used the chapters in the book as a general overview of the topic and used other books to delve into more detail and get the real meat. Nevertheless, I gave the book 4 stars because it helped me past the initial stages when networking was like a foreign language that I couldn't understand.
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