Customer Reviews

ATM, Volume I: Foundation for Broadband Networks (2nd Edition)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This author is notorious for his skillfulness in copying standards. I really doubt he ever understand the technology he is writing on. Almost any book he wrote and I have read is a big confusion. Reader can buy a ITU standard instead of his expensive book to get the question answered. Advice to novice: avoid this author at all. I just admire his speed in rolling out these books, without violating copyright.

This the most hard to read book I've ever met. The new people to the ATM will get lost in a short time in the words, and experts of ATM can not find any useful information in a short time. The writer never explain the new concept and abbreviation clearly. It seems that he is not writing this book to let readers read, but murmuring to himself. Don't wast time on this book like the victim as me.

This book was assigned as a textbook for a class. Fortunately,the class included lecture because the textbook lacks coherentexplanations for the most basic principles. As an engineeringtextbook, it is quite poor. Explanations are vague and contain little relevant detail. Perhaps the worst feature of the entire book is the index. For a 434 page book, a two page index is not even close to enough. In defense of the index though, those 434 pages are all large type with many useless, cartoonish, redundant illustrations. As a brief overview, this may be adequate. But, for the price, I certainly expect more meat and less fat, something with the quality and content approaching that put out by Stallings or Tanenbaum.

I think this book is not suitable for the beginner nor for the advanced reader, while reading this book you will be totally lost, and many of the questions that arise while reading will not have an asnwer, no in depth coverage for important topics like ATM switching (26 pages) is avaiable.

By reading this book, you will feel that you didn't acheive much and that you should read another book.

Any valuable content in this book is totally overshadowed by a lack of organization and a very poor typographic presentation. Although the book was published in 1999, the diagrams appear to be created an DOS 3.0 drawing program. This book needs an editor and a designer.

The book is over 400 pages, yet the index is only 2 pages and omits dozens of terms one would need when using the book as a reference. Apart from the index there are close to 5 pages of abbreviations, but with no page numbers referenced, they're not too much help.

No amount of useful information (which I am still looking for) or good writing within it can make up for the fact that this book is poorly *made*. If you are looking for a book to teach or learn from, this is not it.

The preceding panalopy of one star anonymous reviews for this book seem somewhat false to me. In truth, while there is little order or sense to the content of this book, it does contain useful information, and is not wholely indecipherable. Having worked with ATM during the period when forum White Papers were nearly the only real informational resource available, this book does represent a step foward in that it forms a viable shortening of the information load needed to comprehend ATM networking. While I cannot regard it as a masterfully crafted book, it has its place in my library. Better to read this tome to begin with than to attempt to face that tower of White Papers without guide again.

This book is among the worst books I have ever read, I regret that I bought it, the book talks about ATM in breadth and there is no in-depth technical disscussion,as an example, ATM switching a very important subject is disscussed in 26 pages ! , I don't recommend it to any one, not for a beginner nor for advanced level reader.