27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Top 4 Computer Network Books Compared, May 24, 2009
This review is from: Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach (5th Edition) (Hardcover)
This review compares the following four books:
Computer Networks by Peterson and Davie (P & D)
Computer Networks by Tanenbaum
Computer Networks by Comer / Internetworking with TCP/IP
Computer Networking by Kurose and Ross (K & R)
By far the best book in the list is "Computer Networking" by Kurose and Ross. This book covers all of the essential material that is in the other books but manages to do so in a relevant and entertaining way. This book is very up to date as seen by the release of the 5th Ed when the 4th Ed is barely two years old. There are lots of practical exercises using wireshark and the companion website is actually useful and relevant. The attitude of this book with regard to teaching networking concepts could be summed up as "try it out and see for yourself". One interesting thing to note is that the socket programming example are all in Java.
Next up is the Peterson and Davie book which covers everything that Kurose and Ross discuss but is slightly more mathematical in how it goes about things. There are a lot more numerical examples and defining of formulas in this book which is fine by me and in no way detracts from the book. Also the socket programming examples are in C which is a little more traditional. The points where this text loses ground to K & R is that it doesn't have the practical application exercises that K & R has and it also doesn't extend the basic networking theory that is covered to modern protocols like K & R.
The two Comer books come next. Comer's "Computer Networks" book is probably the most introductory book out of this whole list and is more of a survey of networking topics that doesn't cover anything in any real depth. Still, this is an excellent book in that it is a quick clear read that is very lucid in its explanations and you can't help feeling that you understand everything that is covered in the book. Comer's TCP/IP book is the equivalent of the other authors' computer network books and in that respect it is pretty average. It covers all of the relevant material and in a manner which is more than readable but that is all. There is nothing exceptional about the book which stands out from the rest.
Last comes Tanenbaum's book from the author who is probably most famous for his OS books. This is probably the most technical and detailed of the books with lots of sample C code belying is experience with operating systems and their network stack code. The weak point of this book is that all of the code and technical minutia might prevent the reader from seeing the forest for the trees. Unless you are trying to learn how to program your own network stack for a Unix/Linux system, then I would get either the K & R book or the P & D book to learn networking for the first time. This book would best be served as a reference in which case the technical nature of the book becomes a benefit rather than detracting from the text.
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A good book, but no physical layer ? Wouldn't recommend to total newbies., July 21, 2010
This review is from: Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach (5th Edition) (Hardcover)
After reading all the good reviews, I had a big expectation on this book and was a little disappointed in the end. I have read network books by Peterson&Davie, Tananbaum, and Forouzan so far, and Kurose's book comes somewhere between Tanenbaum's very detailed approach and Forouzan's plain and simple approach.
Pros and cons from my observation.
Pros
- Spends a lot of pages for application layer.
- The very detailed explanation on transport layer and network layer. Probably the best among all the computer network books on this part.
- Every protocol comes with RFC# and many references. Good for further study.
Cons
- Data link layer could have been better presented. Spends the entire chapter for CSMA(Ethernet) and not much mentions about connection oriented protocol. ATM is assigned only 2 pages which gives the readers nothing. Other important protocols(HDLC,Token-ring etc) should have been explained.
- Explanation on IP address(classful, CIDR, subnet) isn't deep enough.
- No chapter for physical layer. This is a big negative point.
Overall, it's a very good book, but I have to say that this book is top-heavy, by which what I mean is the focus is more on upper layers of protocol stack and many things are left out in the lower layers. May be intended to software people, but not for hardware people.
I'm not new to computer networking and can't read this book from the beginner's viewpoint, but I'm under the impression this book might be a little difficult to follow for those who have no idea how computer networks work. The reason I'd think that way is because of top-down approach. Although the total newbies have no idea about computer networking, they may have some vague idea about some data or signals transmitted between two hosts. Starting the discussion with logical properties(process) as in this book might lose the beginner readers in application layer or transport layer chapters. I'd guess it's probably easier for them to start out with physical layer which they can understand intuitively and climb up the protocol stack from there rather than climb down from the application layer. Many books are taking bottom-up approach and there is a reason for that, especially when the book is intended to beginners. What's even worse is that physical layer isn't even covered in this book. Therefore, I'd recommend Tanenbaum's book or Forouzan's to the beginners.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great book!, November 28, 2010
This review is from: Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach (5th Edition) (Hardcover)
I have taken few courses on this subject and I can say this is an excellent book. Even if you do not have an idea of the topic it covers everything, giving a lot of examples and metaphors to explain very clearly all the concepts.
Maybe some topics are a bit general (such as the switch fabric topic) but it is normal since the book covers such amount of topics.
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