Customer Reviews

Demystifying ATM/ADSL

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

 

 

Technical books that attempt to be more than a pure reference manual (i.e. a schematic or specification) can be the most difficult endeavors to write. Finding truly great technical books are rare. Therefore, when I say that Demystifying ATM/DSL is only fair, I am saying it is as good as most.

The book is a good start to understanding how ATM and DSL may come together and why they are a good solution in the market. Unfortunately, the writer wants the book to be both a technical reference and an overview at the same time. As a result, he fails to do either really well.

On the technical reference side of the coin, the book takes you all the way to the altar, but does not marry you. In lynchpin areas of discussion, you get just enough detail to leave you wondering about the rest of the story. For example, in trying to find out about the direct relationship between AAL types, and QoS in ATM, there is one sentence that states CBR uses either AAL1 or 5 (page 131). No other reference is made to the relationships between the others leaving you to wonder what, if any, these relationships are. Another problem with the technical information is that the casual or novice reader may not notice the errors leaving them either confused or completely misled. For example, the author uses the term microsecond in one sentence and then abbreviates it with "msec" (which stands for millisecond) (page 201). Which amount of time the author meant, I still do not know. In another example, the author mixes up the headers on a table reversing the ITU and ATM forum (page 131). If the headers are not reversed, then the table on the previous page must be wrong. I am concerned about other errors I simply absorbed due to their subtlety.

As an overview of ATM and DSL, the book covers a good swath of both the technical and the market. Opinions are clearly unidentified by either direct reference, or intonation. If the reader is careful about the aforementioned technical content, a good foundation of understanding can be ascertained from the book.

Again, I do give the book a solid three stars because these types of books are so difficult to write (as proven by the field available). The problems in the text are not unusual to technical books at large.

I bought the book searching for technical material that would help me understand the ATM/ADSL protocols.

What I found was an extremely superficial book that explains the very basics of telecommunications, digital transmission and the OSI layers. With 1 very short and practically irrelevant chapter reserved to ATM itself and another to ADSL, I wouldn't recommend anyone this book.

If you're the extreme beginner, search for a primer on networking or telecommunications. If you're not, get another book on ATM.

Mr. Busby explains ATM and DSL in easy to understand terms. For the non-engineer, this book is a god-send. Additionally, the book is written with a certain humorous style that makes the otherwise dry technical information easy to digest. I think it is a great read and recommend it to anyone wanting or needing to understand these two technologies.

This is the best communications book I have ever read. Written in a style that is understandable, the book is targeted to my level of understanding. I also enjoyed the ocassional bits of humor. This book is for people with little or no background in communications. I highly recommend it.

I work for a international telecommunications company in the internetworking division. I am the lead engineer for requirements on a project for an order entry system to bundle local loops with DSL. Thanks many times to Mr. Busby's book, and the knowledge I have gained from reading and studying it. Since purchasing "Demystifying ATM/ADSL" last year, I have been promoted twice and both promotions are the direct result of what I learned from Mr. Busby's book. I recommend the book to anyone wanting to learn what ATM and DSL are, how the two technologies are changing the world and how you can take advantage of that knowledge.

This book was a good read for me. I am not a communications engineer but am a businessman who wanted to understand modern communications technology. I was gratified to find a book that can explain to me what ATM and DSL are without overwhelming me with techncial jargon and formulas. A couple of people have written a negative amazon.com review of this book and I think they are wrong. The book is informative while written with easy to understand concepts liberally sprinkled with humor. Mr. Busby is an excellent writer - he can "gush" all he wants too!

I was looking for some reference material relevant to my profession as a technician in this field. The author's rather gushing self-promotion of this particular book on this website makes me hesitate to purchase. The problem with writing, by the author's own description, a catch-all "from the dawn of civilization to the present, up to and including ATM/ADSL" telecom book, is that the average person who might not fathom a more technical book is not necessarily going to wake up one day and see "gee, I think I will order an ATM book today; better find one that goes lightly." In other words, by the time a person reaches the point of needing information regarding sophisticated telecom principles, he or she needs, well, sophisticated information, rendering moot a book that wastes its reader's time and money on cans-and-string telecom history and soft peddles the rest. My apologies to the author for such an initial reaction-- had his approach been less self-congratulatory, I might have been more forgiving.