Customer Reviews

Internet Core Protocols: The Definitive Guide: Help for Network Administrators

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I bought this book as a general introduction to networking. It provides great depth over a wide range of topics (TCP, IP, ICMP, UDP, etc). I enjoyed the book quite a lot, mostly for the background that it provides. It has a good overview of what's going on, and comprehensive nuts&bolts for network admins (going into great detail about packet sniffing and various rarely-utilized flags). Be warned, the book does not really discuss any development strategies or tools for using these protocols; it is not oriented towards developers (except insofar as it provides useful background information). Im not really sure how useful this book would be- either you are a network engineer (and you already know this stuff, hopefully), or you aren't (in which case, most of it is probably unnecessary). Fortunately, I didnt buy it because I needed to; I thought that it would be interesting stuff, and this turned out to be the case!

I can't learn enough about how TCP/IP packets appear at the hex and bit level. Call me crazy. That's what my job in network intrusion detection requires, so I appreciate authors like Richard Stevens and Eric Hall. These folks bring the details of TCP/IP to life, so I can apply that understanding to suspicious traffic. Eric's approach focuses on network monitor traces, nicely complementing Richard's TCPDumps. I would recommend checking O'Reilly's web site for the latest errata, even though none of the errors are enough to detract from this excellent reference work. I am actually more interested in seeing the companion volume, "Internet Application Protocols," as this is where some of the attack action occurs these days. Anyway, this book is in my top ten essential security reading list. Thank you Eric!

This book is true to its name as it covers the so-called Internet Core Protocols (TCP/IP, UDP, ARP, ICMP, and IGMP) very well. Chapter 1 is an overview of TCP/IP, Chapter 2 is an introduction to IP, and subsequent chapters describe the other protocols. The final chapter is a very detailed description of TCP. As an end-user who desired to learn more of the "basics" of these protocols, I learned quite a bit about how each protocol works.

Each chapter describes the "inner workings" of each protocol, complete with sections on headers, messages, and so forth. Numerous screen captures help you gain further understanding of how each of these protocols works with each other. Not only is each protocol described well, there are also sections in each chapter on troubleshooting problems.

The appendices describe how the Internet Standardization process, ie how RFC's (Request For Comments) get created and the processes they have to go through to be accepted. I had no idea what a long process it can be.

If you're a System Administrator or someone who needs to learn the "basics" of TCP/IP, this is a great place to start.

This book, subtitled "An Owner's Manual for the Internet", does a very good work of explaining the core protocols - IP, ICMP, IGMP & multicasting, UDP, and TCP.

Higher level protocols will, apparently, be covered in a future volume. Considering this volume quality, which follows O'Reilly's tradition of high standards, I cant wait for the second volume to come out.

The readable & detailed explanations are accompanied by sample packet decodes (a lite version of the decoding is available on the accompanying CD), make the book an excellent study book for both students and network administrators.

If you need to strengthen your knowledge of network-layer and transport-layer protocols (IP, ICMP, TCP and UDP), go no further than this book. Recommended. This is a critical reference. It's more readable than Comer or Stevens (and easily as complete) for learning about the network-layer and transport-layer protocols. For my money, this is the single most important book to have in this area. A sterling, untoppable effort from the O'Reilly label, and an absolute must for anyone learning about low-level internetworking.

This is a good start on covering internet protocols, but it lacks completeness and up to date information for today's internet service providers. I needed a reference book on all internet protocols. If the book is going to cover internet protocols, it must be current and complete. Future editions , I am sure, will be written with this goal in mind.

The best thing about this book, which covers protocols like TCP and IP in detail, is that the discussion is from the ground-up, not from the top-down. I know what TCP/IP does for me at an application level, but I didn't know how TCP, or IP, or any of the other covered protocols, worked under the covers. Now I feel like I have a much better understanding of the details, which means I have a better understanding of a lot of things that are built on top of these protocols, as well as of system administration type tasks. Even the page after page of 'this bit field does this' text, which in most books would be rarely visited reference material, is decent, because individual reference sections contain real-world 'this means that' information. I would have liked a bit more discussion of Internet naming, IP address details, and so on, but I can find that information elsewhere.

In the appendix on IP addressing, he focuses on the numbers of addresses of various types, and gets most of the numbers wrong. Thomas Maufer, in _IP Fundamentals: What Everyone Needs to Know about Addresssing & Routing,_ does a good job of what Hall was trying to do. (Vint Cerf wrote only a foreword. He should not be listed as an author.)

This book is good for learning basic knoweledge of internet core protocols, definately not for beginners who don't know what protocols are all about. Sometimes gets a little bit complicated with all the 'sasquaches' etc. (You'll know what i mean if you get and read it..) Even though i liked reading the book i give it 4. (Well ok, maybe 4.5)
P.S.
If you are into protocols, this is definately the book you should read!

Very good presentation and description of core protocols (ip, icmp, igmp udp/tcp, arp) and at the right in-depth level I believe (if you want to get more in-depth, the rfc are there for that).
Anyway the book could be made much better just removing stuff since it contains way too much duplicated info. First there are whole paragraphs repeated exactly the same just a few pages away. I think this can get quite offensive (do you think I'm so dumb that I don't remember?).
And then there are the screenshots which are not very appropriate here since this is not an application review. A well formatted packet decode a'la tcpdump/snoop would be much better since screenshots display lots of useless stuff (menus, toolbars, etc) and for big packets a single screenshot can't fit the whole thing so you have to include two or more of them introducing discontinuities.
Furthermore screenshots are uselessly duplicated throughout the book. For example a simple ip header contains jsut 12 fields so a single screenshot can fit them all, anyway to describe these fields, the same screenshot is duplicated 14 times, from page 59 to page 77, and then a few more times. This happens for all the protocols and each screenshot takes about 66% of a page, so this is a real waste of paper! Often it gets really ridiculous when you have the same screenshot on 2 facing pages so you don't even have to slightly rotate your eyes to find them ;-)