Customer Reviews

Data Communications and Networking (McGraw-Hill Forouzan Networking)

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

 

 

I conducted a full book research for an undergraduate networking class I'll be teaching, and this volume quickly rose to the top, and stayed there. It may not be perfect for a strongly math-centric or engineering-based curriculum, but it's perfect for IT/IS and general CS. It is the textbook I wish I had when I took my first undergraduate and even graduate level networking class in college. This is also a book that I actually enjoy reading and flipping through--a prerequisite for students. There is no doubt for me that this book will stand the test of time as a reference book for them through the coming years.

This book is well organized, well written, well researched, comprehensive, and is consistently high quality across the board (table of contents, end of chapter material, glossary, index, illustrations, figures, tables, callouts, boxes, etc.). Please, I challenge you to refer me to a book with a better glossary, or as up-to-date content as MT-RJ connectors (with a Figure, no less!) The website for the book is also top-notch! Students can take a chapter quiz, have it electronically graded, and submit the results via email to themselves and to me. Guess what we're going to do at the end of class? ;-)

The layout and color scheme of the book is surprisingly conducive to learning, something you can't say about every textbook. There is more than enough stuff for a good professor to be able to fill a basic networking class.

Probably the only thing I found lacking, and this is for professors, not readers or students, was a more thorough pedagogical discussion of proposed curriculum paths and sequences for professors to consider. Most will go their own way, but it is helpful up front to know why the author(s) organized the way they did, included what they did (vs. specific model curricula), and what the ramifications might be of moving things around, etc. Personally, I'll be de-emphasizing chapters 6, 8, 10, 11, 17, 18, 22, 24, and 29--FWIW! But that's just me... I also would have liked to have seen, somewhere (even if it was online), a practical primer for students, on how to use Hyperterm, for example, and links to some free utilities for network monitoring, etc. If that was there, I haven't ran across it yet. Oh, and possibly a discussion of certification paths, for those that are interested. But then again, professors shouldn't be handed everything on a platter. So those are minor criticisms.

This was an easy textbook to adopt, and I am quite sure the students will greatly benefit from the work Behrouz and his technical review team did on this great text. I am not always easily impressed, but in this case I was.

One of the more accessible books on computer networks. Very nice and simple illustrations of key concepts. Good explanation of fundamental concepts. Plenty of exercises. Wish I had this book when I started learning about computer networks.

For instructors, this book comes with a comprehensive online resource. In particular, solutions and jpeg images that you can use in your lectures.

The book provides a decent introduction but has far too many errors. It is hard to learn when the examples are incorrect. Things like using 10^5 as the exponent for a kilometer. Guess no one bothered to check the math before publishing. I expect more when I pay $100 for a textbook.

Read this book recently as part of a graduate level introductory course on computer networks at the University of Saint Thomas in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The book covers the five layer TCP/IP protocol suite and provides a basic understanding about each layer using plenty of diagrams complemented with supporting text.

A lot has changed in the networking area since I took a Computer Science course about the topic during my undergraduate days in the late '80s - wireless communications, Internet telephony, multimedia, network security, and IPv6 - to name just a few. And this book gave me enough information to get caught up with a basic understanding about the newer developments, and provided a much required refresher about content I had forgotten about or partially understood in the past. There is also an online learning center for this book - which in my case, helped prepare for tests and revise my understanding of the chapter materials. Included as well is some introductory coverage about cross-cutting topics such as Network Security and Quality of Service.

In short, I found the book to be an easy to understand introduction to a highly technical and interesting topic. One gripe I have about this book is it's rather high price. At $120, it makes for quite an expensive book and I probably would not have bought it had it not been required for the course.

I bought this book 7 or 8 years ago and didn't bother to read till a year ago. I actually didn't have a high expectation on this book after I had read Tanenbaum's and Peterson's book, but it turned out this was actually a pretty good book and I don't know why this book didn't get much attention. It explains the topic in a plain and simple way, yet in depth, so that those who have very little knowledge on the subject can grasp the concepts as well as actual implementations. At a glance, it might look a reference book, but in reality, it has a lot more to let you understand why and how.

This book may not be the one that the professionals are dying to read, but is certainly very good one for the beginners. In fact, I think this is one of the best books to start with, if you are just to start studying the computer networks.

Fourazon attempts to take a beautiful science and simplify it down to something that can be memorized, summed up in one-liners, and given to students without even to attempting to explain the why or how behind the different techniques.

In an overzealous attempt to simplify the (admittedly hefty) subject matter of digital and analog signals and conversion between them, Forouzan makes the mistake of giving bullet-like descriptions and analysis of the different techniques and methods; never pausing to explain where they're used, their relative advantages and disadvantages, why/how they work, or even the purposes they serve.

The straight-forward memorization sections of the book (descriptions of protocols, their various implementations, etc.) is pretty good - at the very least, difficult to find obvious fault in. But anything even remotely related to mathematics, electronics, or basic engineering is very-skimpily explained.

"Data Communications and Networking" reads more like a cliffnotes guide than anything else - Fourozan even goes as far as to repeat important sentences that "need to be committed to memory" in cute blue boxes several times per page.

If you want to learn Data Communication, you would be best-served to look for a better guide.

Listing claimed this was the hard-cover edition, I received the Special Indian Edition soft-cover book with a disclaimer inside the plastic. Thanks...

If you're looking for a book which includes a heavy introduction to data communication, then you should consider this book.

If you are hunting more info on networking, I'd suggest you look elsewhere. All topics are introductary and not conclusive enough to be anything but theory knowledge.

Beware on differenet versions as well, as there exists a localized copy of this book for every country in the world, all which vary content.

I bought Behrouz's data Communications and Networking (4th ed) book for self-study purpose. I found it to be an excellent book. It is not wordy but still very detailed. It has a lot of figures and diagrams to explain the concepts. You can hardly find a page without graphics. The concepts are clearly explained with minimal use of math. You can download very nice power points from publisher's website. If you want to learn about networking, then this is a book worth every penny spent on it. I highly recommend it.

This textbook is one of the worst I have used in a long time. The only good thing about it is a clean layout. The text is not clear and the explanations are sparse. Forouzan covers too many topics in too few pages.