Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

It's easy to write TCP/IP communications into an application using sockets, but deceptively difficult to write it correctly. As anyone who has done TCP/IP development can tell you writing good, solid, high performance TCP/IP code is no easy task. It may look easy because the sockets API is fairly simple to use, but don't be fooled. This book goes a long way towards helping you write high quality TCP/IP code. The book presents 44 tips, which are a treasure trove of information, on the dos and don'ts of TCP/IP development. If you do TCP/IP development at a professional level this book is a must have. I hope this helps J.

This book has a perfect balance of brevity and depth. Anything shorter would have been superficial, anything deeper would begin to compete with Stevens' Unix Network Programming (and lose). As is, this book fits very well for developers who do occasional TCP/IP development, but still need to develop reliable, industrial-grade software.

Every book has target, and that's important for rating books.
As an intermediate programmer(my major was Computer Science but I don't have much experience in real field yet. I admit it.), this book was a great help to me. I have read Mr.Comer's "Internetworking with TCP/IP" and Mr.Steven's "Unix Network Programming". Definitely, those books are good references. But usually, readers of those big books can miss some important points.
While reading this book, I got back to those books and re-read many pages which I have missed their real meaning. So, that's the virtue of this book. This book is quite concise and clear about Network features(especially TCP/IP) which can be easily overlooked.

Author said he would deal with both UNIX(LINUX) and Windows platform, but he didn't follow his promise well. This book is quite concentrated for Unix, but that's not so serious defect. A great deal of this book's technics are quite helpful regardless which platform you work.

I have just completed a major corporate network programming application. Now I am trying to iron out those network problems you only get when large volumes of REAL data start coming through your application.

This book has helped me solve all problems so far. It has also allowed me to make my applications more error tolerant and robust, particularly when erroneous data is allowed through to my apps.

I NOW have some really great tools in my network programming armory thanks to this book. It has also removed any uncertanties in my mind about TCP/IP. Great book, get it, read it, apply it!

This is a "best of class" book. Jon Snader's explanations are stunningly lucid and his sample code can be plucked out and used repeatedly. If you have ANY need to understand TCP/IP programming -- whether you program or manage a network -- you will love this book. It's one of the few that I'll read cover to cover, maybe even more than once! One of the very best books in my extensive library!

Not all of the 44 tips are exceptional. Some of them are pretty trivial such as "Read Stevens books" or "consult RFCs" but about 35 tips are very good. The author knows well this topic and explains very well the reasons behind these tips. I am sure that all these good tips can be found in the TCP/IP Illustrated books but if you do not have the time to read 3 volumes consisting of about 2000 pages, this less than 300 pages book will provide a nice synthesis of TCP/IP programming good practices.

I couldn't find any good examples or documentation on the web that made sockets easy enough for me to implement in C/C++. But Snader's book explained it thoroughly and moreover simply enough for me to understand and emulate, and lo and behold, I had my first socket program running on windows and *nix in about a week. It also does a great job of introducing protocols and TCP/IP/UDP specifically. I have only read the first half but I am sure the second half is just as good. That is all I needed, since I just needed an understanding of sockets to get going. I highly recommend this book to intermediate programmers who want to get into network programming and networking in general.