Customer Reviews

OSPF Network Design Solutions

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Let me first commend the author of this book for a thorough explanation of OSPF. However, I do have a few qualms with the book, especially in the area of the organization of the content of the book. The author jumps one subject to another, and usually without a decent transition, or without a logical link between subjects. (Example: the author discusses the different types of OSPF routers before discussing autonomous systems and areas within an OSPF autonomous system, then proceeds to discuss the concept of hierarchical routing.) Another qualm: the beginning of this book provides an introduction to networking that is composed of a smattering of basic to advanced networking concepts, all arranged in no particular logical order. Anyone interested in designing an OSPF network should already have a firm grasp of networking (and especially of the OSI Refernce Model, which the author spends numerous pages explaining). Just be prepared to skim over the first 100 pages (or so) of the book, as it deals with topics any network engineer should be painfully familiar with. However, the information at the heart of this book is comprehensive and well-worth the read. The author covers the details of OSPF functionality quite carefully, and also provides detailed guidelines for implementing OSPF.

A well laid out book that takes the reader through OSPF. This book is not the "definative" OSPF guide, as the book is not detailed enough to warrant this recognision. It does not address some of the "querky" OSPF design issues.

The book focuses on Sam Halabi's Design Guide that is still the most informative document produced on OSPF configuration guidelines. The author acknowledges this and adds some "value added" with the latest Cisco features. Although the book is a hefty 800 pages, the technical content does not justify this.

As a text book goes, and not free reference material, this may in fact be the best OSPF book on the market. This reflects the quality and quantity of reference material available for this subject !

My attention was first brough to this title becasue I had once taken a class with the author. Surprised that he had written a book I checked out the book in the local book store and found the book discombobulated and full of mistakes. I proceeded to read some of the reviews on the book and a number of the reviews confirmed my initial suspicions. However, I noticed a very peculiar situation recently when I happened across the reviews again on Amazon.com. This book has 12 of 19 ratings of 5 stars (and 2 ratings of 4 stars) and three people who have rated the book 1 star. I have never run across reviews in such contradiction to each other. Although I have only spent an hour or two looking over the book it is clear this title is at best average. It confounds me how anyone in their right mind could rate this book greater than 3 stars, unless however they were a cohort of the author! The only reason I rated this book three stars was not to intentionally bias the rating of the book with out having made a thorough examination.

Oddly enough, I like this book. Odd because, usually, when a book is so poorly edited and contains so many contradictions and errors, I just plain don't like it. Even though I do like it, I don't trust it completely.

I purchased it orginally as a reference about eight months ago and only recently set out to read it carefully from cover to cover. When I did, I discovered that quite often, the text and accompanying diagrams disagree. Values listed in tables for IP address ranges in A, B, C, D and E class networks disagree with the authors text. At one point, the author references a table showing differences between feature-set differences between RIP, IS-IS and OSPF. When I looked at the table, I discovered that every entry in the table said "Yes," indicating that there were *no* differences. Why include the table? A diagram intended to show a chronological sequence of events has no sequencing information whatsoever. In fact, the diagram added nothing of value to the discussion.

Besides disagreements between text and accompanying tables and and diagrams, there are many errors of grammar that confuse the points the author is trying to make, to the degree that I wasn't able to understand what I'd just read, re-read and read yet again.

At one point, I stoped reading in disbelief that any editor could have allowed this book into print. I checked the flyleaf and found no fewer than eleven editors listed. Amazing. Eleven people listed as various kinds of editors and not one of them caught the errors.

This book reads fairly well; I've learned quite a bit from the author so far (I'm only into chapter four) and, oddly enough, I'm enjoying it in spite of the problems. However, I have to say this looks far more like a rough draft...

I'd strongly recommend that anyone learning OSPF from this book study other works carefully. I can learn from this book, but the number of errors I've found in the first four chapters makes me feel certain that, somewhere, the author has made mistakes that I won't be able to catch. That means I won't be able to trust completely what I've learned from his writing.

Overall, I'm quite disappointed. I rated two stars instead of one star only because of the content and organization, which I find good, even though rife with errors.

After reading this book i was very disapointed in the lack of technical information on the protocol. I was hoping for an indepth discussion on the packet formats and information on some of the less documented design issues with OSPF networks. If you are serious about learning this protocol then the RFC, Halabis guide, and Jeff Doyles Routing TCP/IP V1, are the only sources of information that hit the spot. To sum up : This book might have a place for mangement that would like a high level view of the protocol, but CCIE's or students studying towards CCIE will find this book very disapointing.

I have to agree with another reviewer - I don't see how anyone can rate this book so highly. True, I haven't yet made it all the way through the book, but already I have many, many errors. Most of the errors that I have seen so far are relatively easy to decipher, but then perhaps there are many more errors that I'm not catching because I'm not knowledgeable enough with OSPF yet.

I'm giving the book an avg rating because it does seem to give a good treatment of design issues, but there are just too many mistakes. This book would probably be MUCH better in a second edition.

This is the best book I've read about OSPF. The book takes a reader from basic OSPF concepts to in-depth design as well as troubleshooting techniques. The book is easy to read and flows in very logical manner. The author tries to highlight all the detailed information that you need to know about OSPF in a systematic way. It's a must read if you want a solid understanding of OSPF.

Nowadays, you cannot totally trust the book review from Amazon because there are a lot of biased comments out there. Hardly you can determine whether it is a good book or not. Of course, each individual might has different expectation. A book is good to a lot of readers may not be a good one to certain people. Luckily, I did not waste my money! Thanks to those who gave unbiased comments to this book.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who needs to learn OSPF, especially anyone implementing OSPF. It is well worth the money! You might think that at 800 pages it would include a lot of basic theory, but it doesn't. It is 800 pages of useful and practical implementation-oriented information. The FAQs at the end of each chapter are especially helpful. The FAQs themselves are probably worth $55!

This book is very well organized and the flow keeps the students interested all the time. It discusses the protocol architecture, design and implementation with real life examples. In fact,I used the Frame-relay point-to-point examples in my lecture notes. I'd recommed this book to anyone who desires to understand the indepth analysis of OSPF protocol from a design and implementation perspective.

Its an excellent book for people migrating their networks from other IP routing protocols to OSPF.

This book is disorganized and the author's style is confused and contradictory. Leave this one on the shelf and read "Routing TCP/IP Volume I" twice.