WAN Survival Guide: Strategies for VPNs and Multiservice Networks [Paperback]

Howard Berkowitz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 10, 2000 | ISBN-10: 0471384283 | ISBN-13: 978-0471384281 | Edition: 1

Ensure that your WAN can handle the latest technologies with this must-have strategy guide

If a Wide Area Network (WAN) isn't set up properly, it won't be able to meet the needs of the applications being used in the Local Area Network (LAN). And with the emergence of new technologies such as VPNs, multi-service networks, and the mobility of corporate users, the costs involved with running a WAN have changed dramatically. Written by an expert on WAN design, this book provides a comprehensive strategy for choosing the best technologies available for your WAN. It includes analysis of business requirements for WANs, end-user and service provider requirements, and the capabilities and tradeoffs of the available technologies. The book also covers the realities and limitations of QoS, security, multi-service networks, virtual networks, VPNs, multi-homing, roaming, and mobility.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Learn to choose the best technologies for your WAN while keeping costs under control From VPNs to multiservice networks that carry voice, video, and data, to mobility for corporate users--new technologies are rapidly changing the way we manage and design wide area networks. And with WAN costs accounting for 75-90 percent of the lifecycle costs for most enterprise networks, it is becoming increasingly critical to understand the economies of running a WAN. This book provides you with a complete strategy for integrating the latest technologies into your WAN and ensuring availability and quality of service while balancing costs.

Whether you plan to add new capabilities to your network or modify existing ones, expert WAN designer Howard Berkowitz walks you step-by-step through all existing WAN services plus their matching business requirements and cost analysis. Along the way, he debunks myths about what's practical on a WAN, discusses capabilities and tradeoffs of widely used technologies, and reveals the realities and limitations of different services.

With WAN Survival Guide at your side, you'll be able to:
* Formulate end-user and service provider requirements
* Avoid costs through multiservice networking and reduced downtime
* Set up, manage, and enforce QoS
* Provide basic services through dedicated lines, frame relay, ATM, and similar technologies
* Take advantage of virtual networks, VPNs, security, roaming, and mobility
* Work with database fault tolerance and multihoming

Networking Council Books put technology into perspective for decision-makers who need an implementation strategy, a vendor and outsourcing strategy, and a product and design strategy. The Council of series advisors is comprised of three of the most influential leaders of the networking community:Visit our Web site at www.wiley.com/compbooks/

Visit the Networking Council Web site at www.wiley.com/networking council

About the Author

HOWARD C. BERKOWITZ is a product architect for next-generation routing products and operational tools at Nortel Networks. The author of several RFCs, Berkowitz has presented at many trade shows since 1975 and has written for many trade publications. He is technical director for CertificationZone, a Cisco technology review site, and also the author of two books on networking. LYMAN CHAPIN-Chief Scientist at BBN Technologies, CTO for GTE Technology Organization, and founding trustee of the Internet Society SCOTT BRADNER-Senior Consultant for Harvard University, Transport Area Director of the IETF, trustee of the Internet Society, and ISOC VP of Standards VINTON CERF-Senior Vice President for Internet Architecture and Technology at MCI WorldCom, founding President of the Internet Society, and co-inventor of TCP/IP

Product Details

• Paperback: 437 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (November 10, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471384283
• ISBN-13: 978-0471384281
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,389,232 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Howard strikes again, March 23, 2001

By 

A. A. Hines "senior network engineer" (Plano, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: WAN Survival Guide: Strategies for VPNs and Multiservice Networks (Paperback)

LAN Administrators must feel, when they deal with WAN engineers, as though they've fallen into a Lewis Carroll adventure, where a word means whatever someone chooses it to at that particular moment. But for LANs to interconnect, they need a WAN. To conduct e-business, they need a WAN. For any business connection to the Internet, they need a WAN. This book is a guided tour through how WANs developed, how they work, and, most important to the LAN Administrator, how they can serve the needs of the LAN.

WAN Survival Guide is not too big-it doesn't delve into the relative merits of AAL5 vs. AAL1 encapsulation, nor is it too small-every major access technology into, and service offered by, WANs for LANs is addressed. These topics could be a dry, academic exercise, but (as usual) Howard Berkowitz spices the material with "war stories" of actual WAN technology assignments (and why the customers didn't really want they just asked for) and the injection of humor as a means of remembering rules (such as Schwarzenegger's Laws of Networking). The material covered includes emerging technologies, such as MPLS and POS, areas I work in daily at Nortel Networks. They are sufficiently explained that someone seeking service from a WAN can decide if they want to consider those technologies, or if they would prefer to let others go first and wait until more of the bugs are ironed out.

Networking books often contain some editorial miscues (I recall a 3-page errata list for one book which was still quite valuable, warts and all). This one is no exception. Most of the problems seem to cluster in Chapters 3 and 4, with an occasional punctuation error elsewhere. While annoying to the reader, they don't seriously diminish the value of the book for anyone who needs to connect to a WAN as more than a single-account, dial-up user. There's a lot of material covered in the 400+ pages, so don't expect to read it in a weekend. But if you want to begin to understand what's "inside the cloud" or what's beyond the Demarc, this is an excellent place to start.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars full of wisdom and interesting analogies, April 6, 2001

By 

Priscilla Oppenheimer (Ashland, OR USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: WAN Survival Guide: Strategies for VPNs and Multiservice Networks (Paperback)

Howard Berkowitz has a unique ability to share his wisdom and experience in a funny and memorable way so that the reader learns new information, but more importantly gains network design skills.

This book is not YAWB (Yet Another WAN Book). As any WAN engineer can tell you, the most important challenges require a broader understanding. Designing a reliable WAN requires an understanding of fault-tolerance options, QoS, and security. This book covers those topics, along with load distribution, MPLS, NAT, tunneling, and "virtualization." The Layer-7 virtualization section provides useful tips for understanding Web caches, application-specific caches, proxies, and stateful packet screening.

"WAN Survival Guide" is part of the Networking Council Series from Wiley Computer Publishing and it meets the goals of that series well. The Networking Council, which includes luminaries such as Vint Cerf and Scott Bradner, produces books that offer real-world guidance for experienced network engineers. These books don't reiterate the technical details that you can get from RFCs, vendor white papers, or reference books. Instead they present new ways of thinking about options, so that an engineer can compare and contrast technologies using business practices that the author has found useful.

I recommend this book, both because it is enjoyable to read, (especially the Schwarzenegger laws of networking), and because it is practical and unique.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Where's the meat???, April 24, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: WAN Survival Guide: Strategies for VPNs and Multiservice Networks (Paperback)

Berkowitz is about the most loquacious writer that I've ever read. Sure, annalogies are helpful learning tools but Berkowitz takes it to an extreme with every chapter starting with a pointless story and nearly every paragraph using a different "cute" analogy. There are so many analogies in this book that it actually makes the subject at hand harder to learn because you'll spend to much time trying to remember every analogy. Then there's the fact that he fills additional space with pictures of his analogies (do I really need to see a two pictures of the Cheyenne Mountain operations center to understand his analogy?). In fact, the book is so full of [stuff] from Berkowitz trying to be witty that I'm sure you could fit the real information into a quarter of the pages...