Effective TCP/IP Programming: 44 Tips to Improve Your Network Programs [Paperback]

Jon C. Snader (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 14, 2000 | ISBN-10: 0201615894 | ISBN-13: 978-0201615890 | Edition: 1

An excellent next-step for students who have read Stevens' TCP/IP Illustrated series, this book is designed to boost programmers to a higher level of competence by focusing on the protocol suite's more subtle features and techniques. In forty-four concise, self-contained lessons, this book offers experience-based tips, practices, and rules of thumb for learning high-performance TCP/IP programming techniques. Moreover, it shows you how to avoid many of TCP/IP's most common trouble spots. Numerous examples demonstrate essential ideas and concepts. Skeleton code and a library of common functions allow you to write applications without having to worry about routine chores.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Many C/C++ programmers know at least the basics of TCP/IP, but becoming an expert network programmer usually requires a lot of experience and sometimes hard-to-find knowledge. Written to give the intermediate or advanced developer a leg up in creating robust network applications using TCP/IP and related protocols, Effective TCP/IP Programming offers a truly valuable review and guide to getting the most out of your networked programs that are based on this popular standard.

This book is packaged as a series of 44 tips for better TCP/IP programs, but it actually does much more. Early sections review the basics of the TCP, UDP and IP protocols, along with related standards. A winning feature here is the author's care to distinguish between the well-known BSD (for Unix) and Winsock (for Windows) versions of sockets. (By using macros and "skeleton" programs, his sample C code will run easily on either implementation.)

Besides offering nuts-and-bolts programming advice and plenty of hints for better performance, Snader also discusses how IP works under the hood. Standout sections here include a discussion of the pitfalls of scaling a stand-alone or LAN TCP/IP application to the Internet, as well as what a "reliable" protocol like TCP really means. He shows you how to handle misbehaving servers and clients, and how to use multiple sockets effectively, and he offers several useful tips for optimizing data streamed across the wire. Although he doesn't mention Java here (which offers strong socket support on its own), the author does provide Perl examples that work with sockets in order to get you started with sockets used within scripting languages.

Because IP is the protocol of choice for the Internet, more and more of us are faced with becoming socket-programming experts in a hurry. In all, Effective TCP/IP Programming offers a good mix of basic and advanced tips on today's IP and related protocols. It's a valuable resource for any developer who programs for the Internet and wants to write better code using sockets. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered: TCP/IP overview and programming tips, Berkeley Socket Distribution (BSD) vs. Winsock/Windows socket implementation issues, connected and connectionless protocols, network-programming frameworks, UDP vs. TCP, reliable protocols, network programming for single workstations, LANs and WANs; event-driven programming, improving write operations, IP packet layout, byte ordering issues, the Nagle and delayed ACK algorithms, using network utilities: inetd, tcpmux, tcpdump, traceroute, ttcp, and netstat; and resources and hints for improving network-programming skills.

From the Inside Flap

0201615894P04062001

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1 edition (May 14, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201615894
• ISBN-13: 978-0201615890
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #418,475 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lives upto its name, September 3, 2000

By 

Govind (Seattle) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Effective TCP/IP Programming: 44 Tips to Improve Your Network Programs (Paperback)

This book is one of the few you would like to have in your library.
a. It compresses the TCP/IP working in short and sweet format.
b. It's tip section has lot of sub tips/information which mention differences/workarounds etc in concise way.
c. It has extensive hands on samples to refer to.
d. It feels like culmination of real life hands on implementation of protocol suite and its usage in day to day life which author succintly conveys to readers in form of anecdotes/ideas etc.
e. Author is very precise about what book is not and thus maintains the readable/digestible size of the book and refers to comer/steven when appropriate.
f. It will be useful for every software eng to understand the workings and sometimes even pick cool concepts from the most scalable app ever designed (TCP/IP).

Overall the best book buy...most of the effective series have been good.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars entry-level textbook disguised as "tips", July 20, 2006

By 

Chronic Game Programmer (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Effective TCP/IP Programming: 44 Tips to Improve Your Network Programs (Paperback)

I don't know why this book is rated so highly. There's nothing wrong with the content (what little there is), but I feel that it's misrepresented as a book for intermediate level network programmers. I was expecting discussion on when to use select() vs. multi-threaded vs. single-threaded servers, for example. But this book is more for beginners (Tip #1, "Understand the difference between connectionless and connection-oriented protocols").

I also feel that the title is misleading. I was expecting a book of specific tips on par with Scott Meyers' Effective C++/STL series which are vastly superior references on their own topics).

It's decent as a textbook, once you realize that's what this is. But it's still pretty shallow, and definitely not worth the high price tag.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A MUST HAVE BOOK, September 27, 2001

By 

Ted Tash (Phoenix, AZ United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Effective TCP/IP Programming: 44 Tips to Improve Your Network Programs (Paperback)

This book provides an excellent insight into TCP/IP programming. The concepts are presented in a system independent manner as much as possible. The focus of the book is to teach TCP/IP programming concepts and not to teach how to program in WINDOWS, so readers who are not competent in Windows programming may need another reference to help them out there. I have not found another book that so clearly outlines the considerations that must be made in order to design an effective and robust TCP/IP interface. A list of some of the points that I found very helpful are:
1) Why to use TCP instead of UDP except for very specific circumstances.
2) TCP is a STREAM protocol with no inherent notion of message or message boundary.
3) Why to combine data into larger writes instead of many small writes.
4) A discussion of avoiding movement of data with Shared Memory.