Customer Reviews

DHCP: A Guide to Dynamic TCP/IP Network Configuration

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

 

 

I purchased this book on the way to the airport in transit to yep, fixing a distributed DHCP server problem. I found a great deal of useful information in the book, and after having read the book, I am considered an expert among most mortals.

The book successfully turns the RFCs on the subject into readable text, and liberal use of footnotes are there to explain some of the more esoteric notions, and shows packet formation, which is a valuable visual aid.

Unfortunately, I also found an unacceptable number of editing errors. Kercheval (author) has done a very good job with presenting the information, but the editor missed a lot. The book was edited by Radia Perlman (says so on the back cover), and I have to say if I see his/her/its name on other books as editor, I'll have to pass.

This book has a lot of usefulness in it, but the errors in editing are glaring if you know anything at all about networking. Normally, I wouldn't be too upset about typos, but in technical works one wrong character can change the entire meaning of whatever point is being made. My technical writing professor in college would have flunked this editor in a heartbeat.

I forwarded a list of my concerns to both the author and the publisher. Kercheval was interested in them, the publisher did not fill my heart with warm fuzzies, or even acknowledge receipt. A simple "Thank You" would have been nice. A next edition with the corrections would be fantastic.

If you want the guts of DHCP, and you need it now, go ahead and by this edition. If you can wait til Prentice Hall gets it right, then buy the next edition. Personally, if I were Kercheval, I'd be majorly P.O.ed... Can you sue a publisher for malpractice?

This book gives a good overview of dhcp in the first 5 or 6 chapters but is definately not a "definitive guide". The trouble is I really felt a lot of detail was left out.

After about page 60 (halfway thru the book if you dont count the appendices) things really started to get a bit light on detail. The SINGLE chapter on configuring dhcp servers covered how define multiple addresss ranges but seemed to skip the details of how to get the server to choose which range to allocate to a particular client. The chapters on DDNS and LDAP seemed to do little more than say what DDNS and LDAP are.

I will say that the appendices do contain useful information (a list of the DHCP options and a copy of 4 key RFCs) but this is all information easily obtained over the internet.

All in all I was disappointed with this book. It would have been a good $20-$25 intro book. It is not in my opinion a good buy if you are looking for a definitive guide.

I bought this book in hopes in would help me understand dhcp for the mcse exams. Well, I was wrong. $45 down the drain. This book has no more information than any of the other tcp/ip books on the subject of dhcp. Dont let the dollar price fool you into thinking your getting a good book. Needless to say, I was very disappointed in this book.

Berry Kercheval's book on DHCP fills a gap that has been there for several years, but has become increasingly apparent over the course of the last few years. Until now, you had to either dig into the official RFC documents if you wanted to learn about the gritty details of DHCP and related protocols or you could resort to the documentation that your vendor decided to ship -- if any. For some of the older and more established protocols, (such as ARP, UDP, TFTP, ...)helpful information

was available from books such as Richard Steven's "UNIX Network Programming".

This new book, discusses DHCP in great detail and comes with lots of relevant illustrated examples that are clearly split into both client- and server-specific cases. All of the related protocols are explained and examples are given -- albeit not with the same level of detail as for DHCP.

One highly useful chapter, lists the majority of DHCP clients and servers that are currently in use. It then goes on to provide useful tips and tricks, and points out strengths, weaknesses, and idiosyncracies. It is interesting to note, that the author makes a point in keeping this chapter -- as all of the other chapters -- as independant of particular architectures (e.g. UNIX, Windows, Mac) as possible. To system adminstrators who have to deal with heterogenous networks, this is a welcome change from the majority of books on networking that are currently on the market.

I would recommend "A Guide to Dynamic Tcp/Ip Network Configuration" to anybody who needs to learn more about the internals of the DHCP protocol. It is invaluable to people implementing their own DHCP software; administrators configuring DHCP clients and servers will find relevant background information that will prove crucial once a DHCP installation needs to be debugged or once network topology and system configuration gets more complex than the simple cases anticipated by vendors of DHCP software; and finally, anybody who always wanted to know what made their computers tick, will find Berry Kercheval's book a very readable and gentle introduction into a complex subject matter.

There is no depth, and the writer constantly sits on the fence during technical discussion. Additionally, there is no information regarding how specific packages deploy the protocols.