Customer Reviews

Telecommunications Essentials: The Complete Global Source for Communications Fundamentals, Data Networking and the Internet, and Next-Generation Networks

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Lillian Goleniewski has done the IT community a service. She's written a coherent, comprehensive guide to the telecommunications world. "Telecommunications Essentials" doesn't omit technical details. It frames them within a business and historical context that similar books lack. I've read and reviewed three other recently published telecom titles, and this one is clearly the best. Some of the details I enjoyed were descriptions of how fiber is manufactured, the number of wire pairs associated with various transmission media, and specifications for various global television standards.

The telecom world is full of agencies, standards, and products, each referenced by a three- or four-letter acronym. Lillian guides the reader through this technology jungle, offering clear descriptions and historical background. She also provides a thorough glossary (87 pages) and index. Another of the book's impressive features is its global focus, with attention given to E- and J- carrier, as well as T-carrier, systems. Other examples include cellular telephone frequencies used worldwide. Numerous diagrams and figures illustrate the author's main points.

The book is not perfect enough to merit five stars. It suffers from minor typos and at least one technical error. Sadly, like many networking books, "Telecommunications Essentials" states that TCP sequence numbers count individual packets. This is false; TCP sequence numbers count bytes of data. Although I am not qualified to critique the accuracy of the phone-related information, I was pleased to see the remainder of the networking material was correct.

"Telecommunications Essentials" is a must-buy if you want to learn about the telecom world. Although the author devotes too many words to describing the use of technology, and future trends, overall the book is excellent.

Telecommunications Essentials is a superb introduction to the larger field of telecommunications. The text is a rather lengthy book, with numerous illustrations and an expansive glossary, that can be read from cover to cover. The author does an excellent job of covering virtually every part of the telecom infrastructure, including POTS, fiber optics, residential broadband and wireless.

The real difficulty in writing a book like this is deciding to what depth technical material should reach. The author does do a good job of describing some rather complex subjects without resorting to material requiring a formal technical education. Numerous diagrams aid in the readers understanding of the material. The comprehensive glossary also facilitates the learning process.

Seldom does the author delve into detailed mathematics or the physics of propagation. Interestingly, she does describe coding schemes, which is important. There are some technical mistakes, however. In one very odd example, the author confuses femto- with peta- in which she describes "femtobits per second" Fbps. This is repeated, which makes one question the accuracy of other material and quality of the editing.

Since there is no detailed description of hardware, circuits or semiconductors, this book is not for engineers. Rather if you are an investment professional or management consultant working in the area of telecommunications, it will provide a broad overview of telecommunications technology. The text is packed with the lingo of the industry. It also does a good job of explaining the basics of transmission and architecture. However, since it is geared more towards the marginally technical businessperson, it seems that there would be more mention of the players and the relationship between them such as IXC's, CLEC's, and RBOC's. Moreover, there is little mention of economics, which has been of great interest in the past four years as many notable bankruptcies and over-investment have made headlines.

What it is lacking... It suffers from stale data due to the rapidly evolving telecom space. It appears that much of the information is current as of 2001. This leaves many of the recent developments in wireless out of the book. It appears that the author doesn't yet realize the dominance wireless will have in the marketplace. Moreover, discussion of the growth of fixed line-of-site and NLOS technologies are really not discussed. Also, there is little explanation of HFC. Lastly, there is no sections on OSS or billing, which are quite important as far as the industry is concerned.

Despite the shortcomings, the book was an excellent read. I haven't come across another similar text, so it is quite hard to provide a comparison. The broad coverage makes the book at good starting point for entry into the telecommunications industry. Clearly, to get a better understanding of the specific components of the telecom infrastructure, one must reference other texts.

The book does what it sets out to do - cover the basic underpinnings of modern telecom. Its' age (a scant three years) shows a bit here and there (some of the material obviously predating the book), but for the most part it is accurate and relevant. It is not a technical document, as 600 pages would not be enough to cover the component technology. It mentions occasionally the regulatory issues in telecom, but only in passing; its' primary focus is on business. It makes a good book for the student or someone interested in a telecom career. I might also recommend it to someone whose future plans include sitting through a telecom sales pitch or taking a meeting with telecom lobbyists (at least the part where they might drag in an engineer to talk about some cool new technology).

When I say it has a business focus, I mean that it tries to explain the pros and cons of a particular technology in terms of cost, complexity, and ability to satisfy customer needs. Applying the same criteria, I would say the author has provided a moderately costly (that is, not free), easy to understand, and given the constraints of the business focus, does so rather well.

But the book has a few flaws. Here's what I found -

p.254 - "binary form" should read "dotted decimal form" - which the author uses correctly on the following page.

p.255 - no mention of NAT (Network Address Translation) as a means of saving IPv4 address space. Like the author, I'd like to see IPv6 deployed before I'm too old to care.

p.298 - the phrase "going forward" should be extirpated before the next edition. Also appears on p.312.

p.310 - the author briefly mentions an imminent "talent dearth" as driving the next wave of technical innovation, then trots out some ITAA blurb about half the job vacancies going unfilled each year. Of course, training might also help the problem, if global business can be bothered with such trifles.

p.340 - ANX was purchased by SAIC in 1999 I think, and its' URL as published has been deprecated. On the bright side, I did see a picture of a cute puppy when I went there.

p.354 - in discussing voice chat in games, author uses Sega Dreamcast as example. Only the good die young...

p.429 - author mentions Amsterdam. Sounds like reasonable grounds for a drug test to me! Of course, there's always the excuse of visiting the Van Gogh museum...

p.459 merits a special mention as both the best and worst way to sell a wireless future. Not only will the world be at your fingertips, but it will be trying to gnaw them off. While the author sees a benevolent infrastructure where knowledge of your whereabouts and tastes will be used to respond to your needs quickly and thoroughly, I see a world where your convenience comes at the price of empowering spammers, stalkers, and government goons.

Some of the parts I really enjoyed either because of their novelty or thoughtfulness were as follows:

p.274-6 - talking about the notion of backhauling data, the author touches on a problem analogous to Net Neutrality.

The Internet primer on p.259-80 was maybe the best I've read. Sadly it was too short.

Also enjoyed the circuit-switching chapters 4 and 5.

p.331 - author makes a case for tiered Internet. I'm hopeful we can keep "best effort" Internet service at a quality level sufficient for playing Battlefield 2 for the foreseeable future.

This book is better than three stars, but not quite four. Were its' material a little fresher, it would merit four. I'll check out the website and update this review accordingly.

Lillian Goleniewski had touched almost all basic foundations of telecommunication. The explaination is very clear, brief and easy to digest. She managed to explain all the concepts in her own style which is free from complicated terms and jargons. I would say the book itself can be read by non-technical person or a very busy management person who would like to know about telecommunication. My conclusion, this book for every level of people regardless their background. As for network planner and network administrator, this book is good for them to read so that they would understand how the network works from end to end.

The author is a great writer! This was an easy read and I'm glad it's in my personal library. Just what I needed to know about telecom and a nice addition to my other telecom books such as Taking Charge of your VoIP Project. That's another good one. Thank you Lillian! The first time tonight I haven't had to lament the plethora of bad writers and non-existent content editors!!

In trying to keep current on the ever-changing Telecom/technology sector, I sought a book that could be both good reading and a useful resource. The title, Telecom Essentials, and the table of contents led me to believe this was the one-stop, all encompassing resource for all my technical needs. I was not let down.

The guide, if you call it, is well organized and comprehensive. I can use this for learning about general technology issues or for answering specific IT questions that arise in my profession. Telecom Essentials is written in an easy to use style and uses many charts, tables and graphics to convey complex concepts. The author obviously went to great lengths to research the subject and communicate the ideas in a user-friendly fashion.

I recommend this book for anyone interested in understanding telecommunications. It will sit on my bookshelf with my other regularly used reference books.

The field of telecommunications is one of those seemingly endless black holes, filed with ambiquity, wrong turns, too many questions and not enough answers, widely divergent opinions, and somewhat intimidating technical (and sometimes mundane) mechanics.

This author manages to deal head on with the telecommuications industry, not shrinking from her responsibilities to tell the whole story, and allowing the reader, finally, to find some clarity of vision and understanding of what telecommunications is and where the industry could be headed.

Telecommunications Essentials by Lillian Goleniewski is an excellent introductory book to the field of telecommunications networks. The book presents an overview of telecommunications and discusses major telecommunications infrastructures including the PSTN, the Internet, and wireless. The author, who is internationally reputable, explains both the traditional and emerging technologies very well.

The book is in three major parts and fifteen chapters; each part contains five chapters. Part I focuses on the fundamental concepts of telecommunications. It discusses from understanding the telecommunications revolution to the PSTN. Part II focuses on the basics of data networking covering from the basics to WAN, LAN, and the Internet. Part III explores the next-generation networks such as broadband, security, and wireless communications.

I have used this book as the textbook in my course in telecommunications networks over a year. My students have found the book easy to read and understand. The price of the book is not expensive unlike some other books I have used in the past. This is an attractive feature to the students! The multimedia series are great with respect to the coordination between the audio, visual and textual delivering.

Telecommunications Essentials, multimedia series and the web site is very highly recommended.

C.S. Rani, Ph.D.

Since it was published, I have used this book as the text in my graduate course in networking and telecommuncications management. This book is the perfect combination of high-level concepts, sufficient explanatory detail and access to an online site rich with additional resources, including current updates keyed to the chapters. Students from a wide variety of backgrounds, computer science, management and engineering have found this book understandable, current and easy to understand. Over the years, I have used many different texts, some very detailed, some very verbose, and most extremely expensive. None them provide me with what, in this book, I feel is the most comprehensive and forward-looking treatment of networking and telecommunications yet accomplished in a single volume

Another significant feature of the book is that its author is an internationally acclaimed author and presenter and the creator of the eLearning series. This is a magnificient multimedia course covering all of the topics in the book. The visuals are stunning and the coordination between the audio, visual and textual presentation is flawless.

The book, web site and multimedia series is very highly recommended

The field of telecommunications is one of those seemingly endless black holes, filed with ambiquity, wrong turns, too many questions and not enough answers, widely divergent opinions, and somewhat intimidating technical (and sometimes mundane) mechanics.

This author manages to deal head on with the telecommunications industry, not shrinking from her responsibilities to tell the whole story, and allowing the reader, finally, to find some clarity of vision and understanding of what telecommunications is and where the industry could be headed.