Customer Reviews

The TCP/IP Guide: A Comprehensive, Illustrated Internet Protocols Reference

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Right away I must state that I did not read "The TCP/IP Guide" (TTG) cover-to-cover. I doubt anyone will, which raises interesting issues. This review is based on the sections I did read and my comparisons with other protocol books.

Protocol books should be divided into two eras. The first is the "Stevens era," meaning those written around the time Richard Stevens' "TCP/IP Illustrated, Vol 1: The Protocols" was published. For six years (1994-2000) Stevens' book was clearly the best protocol book, and it taught TCP/IP to legions of networking pros. The second is the "modern era," beginning in 2000 and continuing to today. TTG fits in this group.

I question the approach taken by TTG. The book contains extremely basic information (what is networking, why use layers, what is a protocol, etc.) and extremely obscure information (PPP Link Control Protocol Frame Types and Fields, SNMPv2 PDU Error Status Field Values, Interpretation of Standard Telnet NVT ASCII Control Codes, etc.). If TTG were an introductory book, it wouldn't need the obscure material. If TTG were a reference, it wouldn't need the introductory material. I think beginners would be scared by this book, although the tone and explanations are suitable for those with a real dedication to learning. (Note: TTG features 88 chapters, 14 of those are 8 pages or less.)

For beginners, a better introduction is Jeanna Matthews' "Computer Networking: Internet Protocols in Action." Matthews' book is shorter (273 pages), more direct, and packet-example-based, meaning it ships with a CD-ROM of traces that readers can analyze as they read Matthews' commentary. The lack of examinations of packet traces is one of my biggest problems with TTG. If TTG aims to be comprehensive, it should have looked at real traffic using Ethereal/Wireshark instead of staying at the specification level.

For intermediate readers, Eric Hall's "Internet Core Protocols: The Definitive Guide" is a great look at the building blocks of networking, albeit without IPv6 or application protocols. Hall's book is also packet-oriented, with examples for each concept.

For expert readers, "Troubleshooting Campus Networks" by Priscilla Oppenheimer and Joseph Bardwell is outstanding. J. Scott Haugdahl's "Network Analysis and Troubleshooting" and Kevin Burns' "TCP/IP Analysis and Troubleshooting Toolkit" are also excellent. All three show packets.

Those with some networking experience looking for a thorough (but not packet-example-based) examination should definitely read Adrian Farrel's "The Internet and Its Protocols: A Comparative Approach." Farrel demonstrates deep subject matter expertise by showing similarities and differences between protocols. He also covers protocols like MPLS and SCTP that are ignored by TTG.

So what could Kozierok's TTG have done differently? First, the book should be split into three volumes. Volume 1 should cover all of the core protocols (ARP/RARP, IP, IPv6, ICMP, ICMPv6, UDP, TCP). Those of us already familiar with those protocols or already in possession of other books on the same subject could safely ignore Vol 1. Vol 2 should be the first of two volumes on application protocols. Vol 2 could cover all of the standard application protocols well-documented elsewhere (DHCP, DNS, SNMP, TFTP, FTP, HTTP, SMTP, POP3, IMAP4, Telnet, SSH, SSL/TLS). Many people could ignore Vol 2 too. Vol 3 should cover protocols not well-documented elsewhere, but important, like SMB/CIFS, NFS, NTP, various flavors of P2P, VoIP, and instant messaging and IRC.

If a book like TTG is going to devote a chapter to Gopher (which I probably haven't used in 10 years), it should cover SMB, Microsoft's file sharing protocol (also known as CIFS, incorrectly called "NetBIOS" by some). TTG covers NFS instead, saying NFS is "the most common [network file and resource sharing protocol] for TCP/IP." Given Microsoft's domination of the desktop, SMB is ubiquitous. (A few of my recommended books address SMB.)

TTG is still a monumental effort. I did find several sections very helpful. The discussion of bit masking (set bits with OR, clear with AND, invert with XOR) in Ch 4 was clear. Ch 28's explanation of NAT terminology, such as using DNS with bidirectional (inbound) NAT made sense. I agree with Gordon Shephard's review, including the comment about TTG's PPP chapter being unique.

I'm not sure exactly who should read TTG. I would strongly consider it if your networking shop has no other TCP/IP books and you work with people of varying networking skills.

I read and review IT related textbooks as part of my work as a VoIP trainer for TrainingCity. "The TCP/IP Guide" is an outstanding reference text and deserves to be in the reference library of every IT professional.

I noticed an earlier review that claimed this text is not for the serious engineer. Well, I am a Professional Engineer with over 18 years experience in the field, and I found the TCP/IP Guide to contain all sorts of useful information in a format that was both comprehensive and enlightening. In MHO, this text is a great resource for both design engineers/ software developers, and enterprise IT staff.

I was hoping the TCP/IP Guide would include additional information on topics such as RTP (Real Time Protocol). However, given the length of the text (1600 odd pages!), I can understand why some of these more exotic TCP/IP topics were excluded.

Overall, this book is well worth the price.

At 5.25 pounds and 1616 pages, and chock-full of charts, figures, and diagrams (its lists of figures and diagrams alone are 19 pages long) this book truly earns its subtitle. I've been working with TCP/IP for a long time (as far back as the early 1980s) and I've never seen a book on this subject before to match this one. That said I've only been working with it for months so I'll probably update this review after I've lived with and used the book a while longer -- but even now, I know of no other resource (except its online analog at [...] to equal its depth or breadth of coverage.

Literally, when it comes to TCP/IP, this book's got it all. You need only flip through the table or contents (better still, the index at the back) to get a sense of how truly encyclopedic its coverage really is. Let's take a hike through the top two levels of The TCP/IP Guide's table of contents (slightly abridged for brevity):
Section I: TCP/IP Overview and Background Information
Part I-1: Networking Fundamentals (61 pp)
Part I-2: The OSI Reference Model
Part I-3: TCP/IP Protocol Suite and Architecture
Section II: TCP/IP Lower-Layer Core Protocols
Part II-1: TCP/IP Network Interface Layer Protocols (SLIP & PPP)
Part II-2: TCP/IP Network Interface Layer Connection Protocols (ARP & RARP)
Part II-3: Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4)
Part II-4: Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6)
Part II-5: IP-Related Feature Protocols (NAT, IPsec, & Mobile IP)
Part II-6: IP Support Protocols (ICMPv4, ICMPv6)
Part II-7: TCP/IP Routing Protocols (Gateway Protocols: RIP, OSPF, BGP, others)
Part II-8: TCP/IP Transport Layer Protocols (TCP & UDP)
Section III: TCP/IP Application Layer Protocols
Part III-1: Name Systems and TCP/IP Name Registration and Resolution (DNS)
Part III-2: Network File and Resource Sharing Protocols (NFS)
Part III-3: Host Configuration and TCP/IP Host Configuration Protocols (Bootp, DHCP, DHCPv6)
Part III-4: Network Management Framework and Protocols (SMI, SNMP, RMON)
Part III-5: TCP/IP Application Addressing and Application Categories
Part III-6: TCP/IP General File Transfer Protocols (FTP & TFTP)
Part III-7: TCP/IP E-mail Concepts and Principles (RFC 822, MIME, SMTP, more)
Part III-8: TCP/IP WWW and HTTP
Part III-9: Other File and Message Transfer Apps (Usenet, NNTP, Gopher)
Part III-10: Interactive and Administrative Utilities and Protocols

The content in this book is accurate, clear, and both well written and illustrated. See Chapter 12 "PPP Protocol Frame Formats" for some of the best uses of charts and tables to illuminate TCP/IP we've ever seen. See Chapters 8 and 45 for outstanding descriptions and explanations of the history of TCP/IP protocols in general (8) and the TCP protocol in particular (45). The discussion of TCP windowing in Chapters 46 and 49 is also great, and all four of the pages that make up Chapter 86 on Gopher are simply a delight to read.

Like some other reviewers, I was initially intimidated by this book's sheer mass and overall coverage. But as you use this book on a day-to-day basis you'll find it creeping ever closer to your hands over time. It started on a bookshelf near my desk, and now sits on my desk most of the time. As references and resources go, for those who work regularly with TCP/IP it's as close to indispensable as a printed work can get. Given readily available discounted prices of around $50 ($50.37 on Amazon, $49.95 at Bookpool) it's on a par with high-dollar ham or salami and less than prosciutto or smoked salmon by the pound -- and stays with you one heck of a lot longer. How could things get any better than that? Stay tuned, we'll come back to this book in six months and let you know!

The TCP/IP Guide is a huge reference book (1616 pages). Its size alone may intimidate those simply looking to obtain a basic understanding of networking protocols, which would be a shame as the book is very readable, well-laid out. Moreover, the introduction is very sound and helps to educate readers with a baseline of information by covering such topics as theoretical and real-world throughput, networking structures, and bits and bytes.

Because of its size, it is virtually impossible to sit down and read the book from beginning to end. That said the book, from chapter to chapter, is very readable. However, with reference books, it is often more important to talk about structure, contents and format.

The book is broken down into eighty-eight chapters grouped into three sections:
TCP/IP Overview and Background Information
TCP/IP Lower-Layer Core Protocols
TCP/IP Application Layer Protocols

Each chapter and section starts with a brief introduction laying out its contents and putting them in the context of the TCP/IP protocol.

The book looks at the web, HTTP, SNMP, ICMP, SMTP, Email, DHCP, Mobile IP, FTP and TFTP. It includes an overview and comparison of TCP and UDP and discusses establishing connections, management and termination of TCP. IPv6 receives roughly sixty pages of discussion, ranging from a high-level overview to transition challenges, physical address mapping, auto-configuration, reassembly and routing. There is also a fine chapter explaining IPsec components and protocols. And one can find more than a hundred pages on DNS.

Scattered throughout the book are more than three hundred figures to aid in the understanding of concepts. And the more than three hundred tables make for faster referencing and easy comparisons and contrasts. Key concepts are highlighted and set apart from the general text.

One of the strengths of the book comes from the analogies and similes that Kozierok employs to explain technologies that can, at first glance, seem rather opaque. Useful analogies are the sign of a good teacher and someone who is actually interested in helping others learn and gain understanding.

At first, I thought it might be more convenient if the book were in PDF format so that quick searches could be performed. But, I've found that with a glance at the index or the chapters, I can find things easily and reliably. This speaks, to an extent, of the book's structure. I find it irritating when a book of this size is not organized well and sends me searching throughout the book for the explanation I am seeking. Kozierok and his editors have skillfully avoided this trap and kept within a well-defined framework.

If you get the idea that this book is rather exhaustive in its approach, you have started to get the picture. The tome is not a pocket guide. It weighs more than my laptop and you will tire of schlepping it around, between office and home. However, the information contained in the book is easily accessible, informative and comprehensive.

I'm blown away by this book. The coverage of the topics is outstanding in both it's breadth and depth. The tone is very readable. And the use of graphics, wow. This book is tremendous. It's going to instantly be "the TCP/IP reference". It blows the old classic, TCP/IP Illustrated, straight out of the water. This book is worth every single penny. No doubt. It's going to set a new bar for technical books. Wow.

For anyone that uses, administers, or just wants to learn more about networking, this book is PLATINUM. There is so much information continued within this text it's hard to sift through or even comprehensively describe every aspect of it. The author (Charles M. Kozierok) takes every bit of networking knowledge that he has and manages to put this all into a guide that will no doubt go through several revisions and become a de facto standard in any networking or electrical engineering class for many years to come.

Discussing the past, present, and future of networking standards and protocols, the focus in this text is on the TCP/IP standard that is used by humans all over the planet every second of every day, but this is just a part of this amazing book and what makes it so usable and so interesting. The discussion and comparisons of networks in general and what makes them unique is worth the price of admission alone, as well as a great explanation of what data is and how it moves from place to place.

The TCP/IP Guide is a name that doesn't scratch the surface regarding how much thought and work went into this opus work by the author. At over 1,500+ pages, this is a reference, an encyclopedia, and a teaching tool all wrapped up into one. This isn't the kind of text that anyone would just crack open and read in a weekend, but the most experienced of engineers WILL read this book cover to cover and find it an interesting journey to take.

An amazing piece of work that will remain and thrive in networking circles for a long, long time to come.

***** HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION

When the Index alone takes up 45 pages, there must be a lot of information in the book. The TCP/IP Guide subtitle is not kidding when it says "A Comprehensive, Illustrated Internet Protocols Reference". Kozierok covers a great breadth and depth of information in this 1500-plus page book.

Admittedly, I did not read all 1500 pages. I am not sure how many readers could or would do that. Kozierok does manage to take a more or less dry and boring subject and put it into language that is simple enough for TCP/IP novices to follow and that won't put you to sleep.

The TCP/IP Guide is organized fairly well, divided into sections that can be read and applied by themselves, but also in an order that builds on itself to provide an increasing level of knowledge.

From a security perspective, the information is all valid in a relative sense. If you know how the TCP and IP protocols are designed to manage and transport data, it can help you to provide the proper security mechanisms to protect the data and to verify the integrity of the data. Kozierok did miss some opportunities to address security more, such as the absence of detailed IPSEC discussion, but the book doesn't claim to be about security.

All in all, an excellent reference.

I expect this book to become the new classic TCP IP reference.
This is not just another description of the RFCs - the author put a lot of effort into explaining not just "how" TCP IP works but "why" it was designed the way it is.
The author manages to water down this complex subject using simple language - it will make sense even to the non-techies, but at the same time the information in the book is complete even for the advanced user.
Each major topic is split into 3-5 short chapters that become progressively more technical and advanced. This allows the newbies to concentrate on the earlier chapters for each topic and the more advanced user can concentrate on the latter ones.
The emphasis is on fundamentals - what you learn in this book is going to last you a lifetime . Understanding everchanging vendor implementation specifics should be a breeze after reading this book.
It covers and updates all of the material in the classic Stevens book and much more. I still use the Stevens for the hands-on exercises, extending them in light of the new information presentated in this book.
Don't be put off by the size of this reference - it is so easy to read I have read about a third of it in a months worth of coffee breaks!!

To start off - I wish Amazon would let you give 4 1/2 stars. This book really is phenomenal - In terms of TCP/IP "in general" it is in the top three or four collections I've ever read. W.Richard Stevens TCP/IP series was great for it's time, but is now dated. This book also compares very favorably to Douglas Comer)

The author starts out by stating he's trying to write a comprehensive book. He confesses an addiction to detail. He admits that security will be given short shrift. So, at least we go in forewarned.

I don't believe that this is the "Bible" for TCP/IP. I don't believe such a book can be written any more. Possibly W. Richard Stevens could have written such a book (in fact some might argue he wrote three), but the internet has grown in breadth, and with 4300+ RFCs, and 65 STDs, it is too vast to lend itself to a single tome, and this is where I think TCP/IP ACIIPR falls short of being that mythical bible - it's hit on some things, miss on others, and completely missing, well, the 99.998% of the TCP/IP technology that can't possibly fit into a 1500 page summary of the topic. Ironically, if the author had removed about 500 pages and restricted his scope, this would be a 5/5 book. So, in that sense, you get _the_ book on some topics, plus a few other books thrown in for free. :-)

In 1500 pages it does hit a home run a number of times, and serves, what I think its purpose is, well - that of a general survey of some common topics in TCP/IP. With that said, there are some shortcomings.

First the Hits: OSI/TCP model in general (one of the best I've ever seen, if not _the_ best), PPP (60 pages - I so could have used this book when debugging PPP issues the first time), IPv4 addressing (subnets, classful, CIDR) intro IPV6, details of TCP

In particular, the addressing topics caught my attention - When I first started reading his description of Class A,B and C networks I was literally ranting say "No, No, this is all outdated, nobody talks about classful networks in the real world!" - and then was hit with the chapter on subnetting where I went, "well, okay, but we gave that all up 10 years ago," and then he slowly segued into supernetting before finally landing us on VLSM and CIDR notation - and I've now decided that this is one of the finest introductions into the history of IP addressing that I've run into. These chapters alone are worth half the price of the book.

Miss: IPSEC - particularly key management. After spending 60 pages talking about PPP, IKE, Oakley, and ISAKMP get a grand total of two pages. NFS - After 100+ pages on DNS, NFS gets twelve including one quarter of a page on RPC. SMTP, page 1278 - "SMTP does not include any mechanism for encryption to ensure the privacy of email transmissions" - this is not an errata, this is just plain wrong, a simple grep of the IETF RFCs for "SMTP" (or a glance at most SMTP mail clients) was all that was needed to catch this - RFC 3207: "extension to the SMTP ... allows an SMTP server and client to use TLS ...to provide private, authenticated communication over the Internet. ". In fact, mail in general - no discussion of MUA/MDA/MTA. It is blatant misses like this that make you question the authority of author over his topic.

Missing altogether: SCTP - A shame because it's useful to show a third transport layer protocol for contrast. The world is not all TCP/UDP. (Okay, in practice it is, but just a taste of SCTP would have been nice)

ACIIPR is a good survey of TCP/IP, but Kozierok is not Radia Perlman or Richard Stevens - but he doesn't try to be. Most (but not all) of the descriptions have the feel of "how does this work" and lack the depth or insight that you will get in books more dedicated to, shall we say, a smaller piece of the pie. We get a sketch, a description of what, but an in-depth analysis of algorithms, or any examination of implementation (code) is left to other, more focussed works.

Kozierok really went to town on some topics, and on others he just took a pass on researching or skipped altogether (RPC, SMTP, NFS, SCTP, IPSEC Key Management).

With five or six exceptions (PPP, Addressing, TCP, a few others) I consider it to be a "manager's introduction" to TCP/IP, or possibly an intro for a junior network tech. It sometimes delves into a strange level of detail for its audience (60 pages of PPP and 100 Pages of DNS) and then too quickly looks at other topics. It is useful as a quick, if not necessarily authoritative summary of its topics. I could see it as a useful textbook for a business or arts student interested in TCP/IP, but (with a few exceptions) it's not going to be the key reference in computing science or engineering - Such a book cannot exist, and the boxes of books and crammed bookshelves that we all have are testament to that.

This book is outstanding. The reason? Because I can understand it. And that's saying a TON. I really enjoy the side humor which keeps the book a comfortable read. The chapters are laid out in a format that will bring you back to some fundamental elements and descriptions, so you don't have to thumb back to the previous chapter to remember something you're reading up on now. It's a very solid read. I enjoyed it. Thanks for putting this book together!!!