Customer Reviews

Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach Featuring the Internet

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I'm a graduate student in Comp Sci, and I recently had the opportunity to take a networking class again just to refresh my basic knowledge (my dissertation topic isn't related to networks). It was a pleasant surprise for me that the class utilised this textbook. I have been at the university level in CS for 8+ years (grad + undergrad), and this book is *by far* the best introductory computer science textbook I have ever read in any CS subject.

The book is very well-written and extremely interesting to read. I was never bored in any chapter. Kurose and Ross are knowledgable experts in their field, and their exposition of the material is fantastic. Unlike Tanenbaum's book, they start at the application layer and move down. IMHO, this is a far better pedagogical strategy, because young students these days already have an excellent layer-5 understanding thanks to daily interaction with HTTP, IM, P2P file sharing, etc. If I remember correctly from my undergrad days, my own experience in a bottom-up approach, starting at the physical layer, really put me to sleep and put me off from networking. That's a shame, because networking is a really exciting field.

The best parts of the book are the breadth, thorough use of real-world topics, and the illustrations. In fact, the diagrams and illustrations are just plain great. Most technical writers often rely too much on the written word. Here, the authors augment almost every pair of pages with an illustration; this is simply remarkable. The explanations of fundamental topics (such as packet-switching, DNS, TCP congestion control, IP routing, and ethernet) are *extremely* clear. More advanced topics are very up-to-date, covering cutting-edge subjects such as P2P, CDNs, security, NATs, 802.11, RTP, etc. I have not found a better introductory explanation of CDNs anywhere else. Although networking does have a lot of math in various areas, this introductory book does not get too much in detail in mathematical discourse, making this book very readable. That's a fine approach in my opinion, as a deep mathematical analysis of various topics is best left for grad school or a professional job.

The authors' academic background really shows. Every topic is filled with citations/references to other work. This is great, because this book is just an introductory book with wide breadth but is otherwise lacking in significant depth. The interested reader (future grad student or network engineer?) can easily follow up on any topic he/she likes thanks to the exhaustive list of references.

As if all of that were not enough, there is an accompanying website that has interactive Java applets demonstrating various topics as well as a set of Powerpoint slides for download. Furthermore, I enjoyed the interchapter dialogues with various famous researchers in the field.

All in all, this is an outstanding book for the undergrad level, and I expect this would be a great book for professionals who want to have a firm grasp on networking fundamentals. I wish all my undergrad books were written as well as this one.

I never read a book that was more clear then this one. Also while the book is rather theoretical, it contains so much real case studies and interesting facts that the reader keeps his motivation from the start to the end of the book. Here is a comparison with Tannenbaum 's famous book on computer networking.

-Both books go deep and give fairly rigorous explantion without too much mathematics. Only some basic math and basic probablility is required like binomial distributions etc ...(remark however these books do not delve into the details of mathematical queueing models etc ...)
-This book is very up-to-date with the latest internet technologies like point-to-point file sharing, streaming and multimedia. Tannnenbaum does not contain the latest developments in these fields.
-The physical layer is explained in more details in Tannenbaum.
Other layers are explained with the same level of details in both books.
-This book reads better then Tannenbaum without sacrifying rigour. It contains also much more real-life case-studies.
-The concepts in this book are explained in a much clearer way then Tannenbaum. I perceived Tannenbaum as sometimes confusing. The authors of this book have so good didactic skills that they could explain complex networking topics to chimpansees....

Conclusion : this is the only book I know in computer networks that goes deep enough and explains the concepts in a clear way...If you are looking for the best book on computer networking, stop looking : here it is !!!.

It's hard to believe that a "technical" book can be so captivating - I could hardly put it down once I start reading it. My only complaint is the price. However, look out for those who sell "Softcover Intl edition with exact same content". I made the mistake of trying to save some money and bought one, and the quality of the book was simply terrible - flimsy paper, ink shows through, and all the figures were in poor black-and-white copy (instead of the nice shades of gray with blue highlight). On the back of my book it says "For sale only in Indea...".

I am a new graduate student who had already taken a networking course in my undergrad but, my foundation was very shaky. I never saw the big picture and as a result, I had developed a dislike for Networks. However, because of an approaching summer internship in a networking company, I had to take an undergard course in Networking to brush up my networking knowledge. Fortunately for me, the instructor followed this text. The course turned out to be the best course I ever took in my life, mainly thanks to the textbook. This book by Kurose and Ross is ABSOLUTELY fantastic. Not only am I now confident about the fundamentals but I can also see at a glance the whole field of networking with its rapidly expanding frontiers. I wish I had this textbook in my undergrad course.

A word about the approach followed by the book - I always considered top-down approach to be the most natural way to learn a new topic. Indeed, what could be more natural than gradually going from the known to the unknown. The authors take you through a journey from the application layer consisting of the wonderful applications like WWW, email which we all use but whose inner workings we never knew. Assuming transpost layer services as given, the authors show you how these applications actually work. As soon as you understand this, you just can't stop wondering what is under the hood of the transport layer, i.e., what are the workings of the transport layer. And thus goes the wonderful journey across the various layers until you end at the link layer. And to top it all, the authors wrap up their book with a brilliant discussion of topics which deal with issues across all layers. These are the Multimedia Networking, Network Security and Network Management. I have found the book so wonderful that I have read it from the first to the last page. I have fell in love with the Networking field after reading this book that I am planning to change my thesis topic to Networking!

To conclude, I believe that this book is the best introductory book on Networking. Go ahead and buy this book with full confidence. Believe me, you won't be disappointed.

After taking two classes in computer networking, one using this book - with a top-down approach, another with the down-up book, I have to say Kurose's method is superior.
Kurose takes a well drafted course thorugh the often murky waters of networking, and explains to you how the services you know - the web, e-mail, FTP - work, so that as you progress you will have the ability to understand why the underlying protocols do what they need to do. You understand what is needed to make the Internet work and getting the general perspective first and delving deeper as you go is a great, and sadly unique, way of doing things.
An excellent book for those in school or those just interested in learning how networking works.

For the most part, Kurose and Ross do a decent job of discussing networks and expanding your knowledge. However, some information they oversimplify to the point of being wrong. For instance, in their discussion of sequence number and acknowledgement generation they break down the TCP 3-way handshake and how data transfer impacts acks. Unfortunately, they fail on how FIN impacts these computations. There are more situations like this in the book, such as IP offsets. It is as if you were putting together a jigsaw puzzle. However, someone has trimmed some of the more intricate pieces, in an attempt to facilitate the puzzle being put together a little quicker. Unfortunately, this action has robbed you of some important details of the picture, and in the end it confuses the situation rather than bringing clarity.

This book has 8 chapters for a total of 700 pages.
It is one of the best books I have read. The language is simple, authors covers complex topics in highly understandable way. The language is informal, still highly informative.
This book follow the OSI model from a top down approach, starting from the application layer. I think this is a good approach. Generally people reading this kind of books already has a general concept of how computer programs over a network works. So starting from the application layer simplify a lot the understanding of the material presented here.There is not much math involved here. All concepts are explained "verbally" as much as it can be.
The material is well organized. You'll never feel lost. All you need to know is here. Reading this book is a pleasure.
The only penalty I can assign is the price: too high for a book of this category. If I can say three adjectives to describe this book, well, I choose "complete, clear, accurate".
If you are searching a book about computer networks, this is the book for you. Buy it without doubts.

This book is the best computer networking book ever. If you are a student trying to understand Networking concepts, please DO NOT read Andrew Tanenbaum Intro to Computing. That is the worst book ever. Computer Networking:A Top Down Approach by J Kurose & Ross explains all the layers of networking with the internet in mind and hence makes it easier to understand complex algorithms and concepts. You can read this book as many times and every time you will learn something new or understand a concept better.

I had a wonderful experience reading this book. Not only is Mr. Kurose a good writer but his teaching is excellent. I had the opportunity to take a class with Mr. Kurose using this book. The book breaks down the Internet/Networking into 4 layers ( did not use the application, session, and physical layers ) and explains them very well. Excellent examples! Well written. In addition to those 4 layers the book goes over security, multimedia, and network management.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to know more about networking.

It is one of the best books on the topic i have ever read.
First of all it is a top down approach starts from the application layer rather than physical layer. This helps you relate directly to applications used over the net, like http protocol in one's browser, then it proceeds downward to transport layer uptill the physical layer, so you have one end of the thread in your hand as you proceed. When starting from physical layer usually readers are lost and cannot directly relate to their understanding of a network.
It gives a very good conceptual understanding of the layers.
I owe to this book my understanding and concept of layers and what is actually happening at which layer.
While studying Tanenbaum i was usually lost as where i actually am (i-e which layer) and was usually lost about the head and feet of the story even though the topics were writen in an excellent manner.
This book gives excellent material on what's inside a router how it uses a tree data structure to find output paths for incoming packets. Has one of the best references to online papers etc.
The only thing weakly written is the last chapter on network management, it's good but didn't come up to the standards this book gots me used to.
It is now being taught for the third consecutive year in university of engineering and technology, Deptt. of Elect Engg., Pakistan.