Customer Reviews

Network Algorithmics,: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Designing Fast Networked Devices (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Networking)

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The book describes in an unique way some of the algorithmic and system implementation details of network appliances. Some of the chapters (packet classification, forwarding and traffic measurements) might be know to readers familiar with the SIGCOMM and Infocom conferences: these chapters are excellent tutorials to some very advanced networking topics and can help readers to better understand papers from the main author published at Infocom/SIGCOMM.
Its probably the best networking book I've ever read....and I read a lot.

This is an excellent, excellent text. Techniques and principles for building high performance distributed systems are hard to come by except through experience and talking to experts. There's a lot of knowledge in the community but this book is the first time to my knowledge that someone has collected it and presented it in a coherent framework. Even if you don't work with low level stuff, this book will help you learn to think in a "systemsy" way about high-performance designs.

Varghese explains a very specialised but critical field. He presupposes on your part an already extensive knowledge of TCP/IP and its routing protocols. The book usefully offers on its inside cover 15 principles for overcoming network bottlenecks. It seems fair to say that the bulk of the book is devoted to explaining and using these ideas. Undoubtedly, other books have elucidated most of these. But maybe not as explicitly and cogently as Varghese.

One key motivator mentioned in the text is to defend against network attacks. For this, it helps to be able to quickly analyse as many IP packets as possible. Perhaps an unfortunate commentary on today's Internet, inasmuch as this will be the most important reason for some of you to get this book.

I'm a software engineer in the networking industry, specifically load balancers. In this field, performance is very critical and we are always on the lookout for making our devices faster.

I've spent quite a lot of time looking for books that contain insights, principles or even recipes that can aid professionals like us. And that's where this book becomes so invaluable, because I've not found another equivalent to it.

Varghese is an academic researcher all right, but he was in the industry and has made significant contributions to industry - such as timing wheels which is now standard for timer implementations. So the book is not dry network theory but full of practical advice, principles and examples of making fast network devices.

The author combines principles from operating systems, architecture and networking, along with simple ideas and a common-sense approach. The result is almost a cookbook of common performance issues in networking devices and ingenious ways of overcoming them.

Summary: If you are going to write software for a networking product, buy it. You won't regret it.

Very nicely written book. Many system design tips. The author motivates each tip very well, and shows how it's applied in different context. Prof. Varghese's experiences really shine through here.

"George Varghese has had a remarkable impact on the real world of networking with his algorithmic innovations over many years. The networking research and development community is fortunate that
he has now distilled his knowledge in this very readable, insightful, and much-needed book." -- Yukuen Lai