Customer Reviews

TCP/IP for Dummies

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Background: I am a software tester who has worked on several projects using network technologies to implement the software solutions. In each case, I had no training or understanding of the underlying techologies used (a situation that creates tons of stress and frustration). I have been a purchaser of many of the "For Dummies" books because they do often succeed in providing an introduction to, and conceptual framework for understanding the subjects they discuss.

My Review: This book has been a mixed bag. Before reading TCP/IP for Dummies, I did in fact feel "like a dummy". Reading it has helped to allay that feeling. The authors do succeed in explaining many TCP/IP technologies and networking issues. I now have an awareness of what was going on under the hood of those software implementations I worked on and why they were implemented as they were. However, I must agree fully with the reviewers who found the food analogies used by the authors excessive and unuseful. For the most part, the analogies did nothing to illustrate the concepts. At several points I just stopped reading altogether because I knew the author(s) were off on their food tangent again, had forgotten their subject matter, and more importantly their audience. At other times, I crossed out entire paragraphs because they contained nothing but the continued bad use of these annoying analogies and explained nothing. (However, I blame these lapses on the editors as much as on the authors.)

Beyond these frustrations, I also took the following exceptions with the book:

(1) the authors fail to explain key concepts such as ports and subnetting in an understandable fashion. I found no reference to or discussion of TCP/IP sockets. (I have subsequently learned that understanding these concepts are key to understanding the communication process between two networked computers).

(2) the internet protocols are poorly explained and in some cases not explained at all. This lapse occurs in Chapter 6. The entire chapter needs to be re-written.

(3) terms are introduced before they are explained (for example ports), or are not explained at all. The authors have one subsection in Chater 6 called "Protocol, application or service", the idea being that some TCP/IP functions are one, the other or sometimes all of these. Still, the authors do not provide any distinguishing explanation between these three things or provide a meaningful explanation of them. By the end of the book you know (sorta) but where is the simple explanation that could have given clear and immediate understanding to the reader?

(4) the index is poor -- on a couple of occasions I could not find reference to the topics that I was looking for (memory escapes me now as to what they were).

(5) the compact disc that comes with the book includes files containing the RFCs, which are technical specifications and explanations of the protocols, but there isn't any reference on the CD of the topic of the RFCs (just their number). You have to open up each file and browse them to see what the RFC is about. Who's got time to do this?

In summary, the book has merit for the truly uninitiated, which is what I was at the time that I read it. I am no longer ignorant (which is in and of itself a reward). Of the several books that I browsed at the time I bought TCP/IP for Dummies, and those I've browsed since reading it, I still conclude that this was the right book to start with (even if it does leave you with that feeling you get after an unsatsfying meal: You're no longer hungry, but you do want and need more.) Sorry, I just couldn't resist the food analogy.

I was mislead by the title. This book doesn't teach us the innards of TCP/IP or its programming or adminstration. Instead, it is a shallow survey of internet applications. All the good info is pointed at (rather than included) in the form of urls. I spent $20 for a bookmarks folder. It should have been called Internet for Chefs. The food analogies were the worst the authors could have chosen to illustrate the concepts. They were distracting, annoying and downright harmful to the text flow. The humor was tasteless, and the constant ridiculing of the "nerdy jargon" gives the feeling of authors who hate the subject matter rather than love it.

How do you teach TCP/IP to people who have little computer technology experience. That is what I faced as an engineer teaching 'newbies' the inside of the technology. My courses are taught to ordinary people, who just want a basic understanding of the field. TCP/IP is a tough subject to get across, even to 'techies'.
Having reviewed several books on the subject I found this to be the most useful. It's fun to read. It gets the IDEA across.
And, yes, it's not a book for serious, career seekers. It's a book for the average Joe - Joe Public.

The idea of the series "for dummies" is to present complicated concepts in a simple way, so that people without any background in that particular area of knowledge could easily follow and understand. This is not an easy task, and many authors use analogies from the everyday life to explain complicated technical issues. In this book, the usage of analogies exceeds all reasonable and necessary proportions, and some of these analogies are tasteless and excessive, from my point of view. I really wonder what level of "dumminess" did the authors anticipated in their readers to choose such a level of explanations. Furthermore, the subdivision of the text into 2-3 subsection per page with weird titles like "Let network be Santa, and it just might work", along with the above mentioned examples (which are pretty much in the style of the subtutle, quoted above) distract from the topic of the book rather than help. To be fair, I should admit that the book does contain all the basics of the TCP/IP networking, and could be a good starting book, if it were better written. However, if it is NOT your first book on networking, it will not teach you a lot, and it is certainly not deep enough to be used as a reference.

I was looking for a book that explained the nuts and bolts of TCP/IP. Instead the book dedicates six chapters or so to TCP/IP. The rest of it is a superficial treatment that a new computer user might find useful, but that contains little material for the intermediate user (and only intermediate users, not beginners, would even know what TCP/IP is, much less want to read a book titled "TCP/IP for Dummies.")

For example, page 197 lists plug-ins for Web browsers, such as Shockwave, Flash, and RealOne Player. Useful for a rank beginner, but not for an intermediate user wanting to learn about TCP/IP. Page 188 explains how to "understand URLs," giving the example of http://www.ibm.com. Again, not very useful for the intermediate user.

Meanwhile, there are some TCP/IP basics that are never explained. Ports are not explained very well, and ICMP receives barely a mention. (However, page 64 tells me to "see RFCs 1256 and 2463 for more information on ICMP. This is not at all helpful.)

Some of the information is dated or, worse, just plain wrong. One passage suggests that gigabit Ethernet hardware costs a fortune, which is no longer true. Page 298 states that NetBIOS is a "Windows proprietary protocol." It is not; IBM originally developed NetBIOS.

Overall, the first few chapters of this book are much too technical for new Internet users, but barely meaty enough for someone who wants to understand TCP/IP in depth. All the remaining chapters are fine for new Internet users, but mere filler for anyone experienced enough to understand what a URL is. This confused mishmash of a book will satisfy no one.

Let me start with the good news: This book is packed with information regarding TCP/IP. All of the issues are in here: all the various protocols/support programs related to TCP/IP for both Windows and Unix/Linux. And a lot of it is written in the famous light-hearted dummies-style that keeps the book relatively easy going.

What irks me is the organization of the book. Some of it is VERY basic (explaining client/server for example). In contrast, other parts go into fine detail, containing exhaustive lists for example. Overall the book left a somewhat unorganized impression, a bit of a gathering of loosely connected issues in no particular order. For me, this made it diffcult to "digest" the book and remember the info in it.

In summary, if you are looking for a book that will allow a beginner to look up some of the jargon, this book is not a bad choice. For an introductory or advanced textbook, look elsewhere.

I would agree with some of the reviewers, and say that it is wrongly titled as "TCP/IP for Dummies", in fact I was suprised by their title and what I actually read. However, I enjoyed the book because I had also an interest in the workings of the Internet. The authors state in the intro that "The thing about the TCP/IP communcations protcol is that it's fundamentally tied in with networking...So, we've included a bit about networks and The Internet..." So it did not delve into great details of TCP/IP, but then again it is an very introductory text. So it worked well in just the right amount of TCP/IP detail with a great thorough introduction to The Internet technology.

As to the accuracy of some statements, I don't know because I am not an expert. However, the writers are not dummies, in fact, when someone can take a difficult and complex subject, and bring it down to a layperson's understanding it often is a sign that they really understand what they are talking about.

Furthermore, this is an excellent introduction to the workings of the Internet. I had a very incomplete understanding of the hardware/software of the internet, it helped me greatly to better understand many of the terms that I've heard discussed in techie circles. True, the dinner plate allegory did not help at all, but when they discussed matters in a more simple technical way, it was great. I give it a **** four-star because although the organization may not have been perfect and the title is slightly misleading, it still did an excellent job of explaining the internet software/hardware in a thorough fashion.

Well, in my opinion subneting is probably the hardest thing in computer networking. I bought this book to hopefully understand subnetting fully. I understood some before I bought this book because I am taking classes on TCP/IP and Networking. This book is excellent on gettin you to understand all of TCP/IP. However, after reading the section on subnetting I am still unclear of how to fully do it and understand it. I thought this book would clear it up for me but the author was unable to do so. I wish there was somebody out there who could explain it to me in the simplest way possible. That's why I gave this book only 4 stars. Other than that, this is an excellent book if you need to understand TCP/IP.

I had heard that previous versions were so-so, but this edition had everything a non-expert would need to understand the basics of the TCP/IP protocal. It easily explained the differnce between IMAP and POP3; how FTP works; HTML vs XML; and the section on security (SSL, SSH, etc.) was excellent, as was the hardware section.

It truly is dummied down, and don't rely on it if you really want to configure telnet in a linux environment, but for basics it's excellent.

Being someone that knows Linux/Unix/Win environment and knows bits and pieces of the techno-babel that TCP/IP poses, I wanted to fill in all my questions with solid information and get prepared for delving into advanced topics of TCP/IP. This is EXACTLY what this books prepares you for. For any beginner that knows nothing or something and wants to fill in every hole about networking (atleast every question I had). The detail was wonderful getting into Unix files and NT settings and clients settings and so forth.