Customer Reviews

Installing, Troubleshooting, and Repairing Wireless Networks

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I hate to give this book 2 stars because while reading it I really got the impression that the author was a good guy. Unfortunately I got that impression because he blabs a lot. This book is 300 pages long (not including index/appendices) and honestly could have been done in 90 pages. At first it was nice since I spend so much time reading really difficult books but after awhile I realized that I had read 30 pages and not really gotten anything out of it aside from some anecdotes and a couple tips.

The configuration chapters could almost be replaced with the vendors documentation and some common sense. I say almost because most vendors don't really explain how to set up WEP or the ramifications of SSID broadcasts etcetera.

The security chapter in this book is 9 pages long! Doing a little math...hmmm, 3% of the book. Considering the security implications of going wireless this is ... bad. To be fair he does throw security warnings all throughout the book, but repeating the same general warnings a bunch of times doesn't help.

He also manages to complain about the difficulties of Linux/Unix for about 2 straight pages at one point. He's a Windows guy, fine, I get it. But it's pretty unprofessional to trashtalk in a book. It's also a bit worriesome that the guy we are looking to for technical expertise is so obviously frustrated with something that 14 year olds routinely use.

So who would I recommend this book to? Someone who basically knows how to use Windows to check email but not much else. If you know anything about networking or *nix I wouldn't bother.