Customer Reviews

Network Management: A Practical Perspective (2nd Edition)

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

 

 

The book "Network Management" Has three parts. An overview of network management and the tasks of a network management application, an introduction to the network management protocols SNMP, SNMPv2 and CMIP, and finally a description of the MIB-II and the RMON MIB.

Lets start with the better parts of the book. The introduction to SNMP[v2] is probably one of the best brief introductions to these protocols. The authors give an overview of the problems that SNMP tries to solve and they give a short summary of the history and the evolution of SNMP. This text is from 1996 and SNMPv3 is not covered. The introduction to CMIS/CMIP is a little bit too brief though.

The third part of the book describes the MIB-II (RFC 1213 and its extension, the RFC 1573, as well as the RMON MIB (RFC 1757). Like the second part of the book, this part is written very well and gives the beginner a good understanding of the content and the purpose of these information bases.

The first part of the book, the introduction to network management is less valuable. It is hardly more that a very brief discussion of the problems that network management applications try to solve and the text is rather simplistic. It is very noticeable that this text is quite old and hasn't been updated very well since the first edition of the book. Graphical output is described as an advanced feature a little bit too often. The illustrations used throughout the book are generally good, but figures showing a possible screen output are too simplistic and from an forms oriented time. The use of some actual screen shots would be better.

Overall, this is a good introduction to network management for the beginner. If the first part of the book gets modernized for a third edition, this could be a really good network management overview.

This is the best book I have come across that provides readers of all levels with a very basic to an "in the weeds" understanding of Network Management concepts and functional areas. It also does what other Network Management books does not-it explains how to collect the ISO Network Management Functional Area data for analysis using SNMP MIB Groups. I recommend this book to engineers who want to learn more about Network Management (to include Performance Mgmt, Fault Mgmt, Accounting Mgt, Configuration Mgmt, Security Mgmt) concepts and how to collect and organize such data using a management protocol.

Provides a good basis for starting out in network management. The theory is sound and applies well to all network management systems.

This is the best book I have found to explain how to use MIB information. I use the formulas in the book to build our in house NMS applications. Good overview of SNMP and SNMPv2.

I was very disappointed with this book. Too generic and high level to a reader to get much out of it. It should be considered for net mgt beginners only. There are other, better beginner books on the market.