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20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Usage of this book depends on your background, January 10, 2002
This book has been heaven sent for me, mainly because of my background. I have a EE background and I have been always wanting to know about the data networks.The first and the second parts of the book deals with the signalling and transmission media and also the basics of the data networks like data link control. I found these sections (mainly signalling) very weak and sub standard, but most of the CS students in the class were scratching their heads complaining that it was too complicated. The best thing in these sections is the data link control (just spectacular). The remaining parts of the books have covered data networks. Now some seasoned networking person would find these parts very abstract and not enough depth in it, but a novice that I was in data networks, I loved it.
The three sections are: WAN
LAN
Security and Internet and protocols The discussion on WAN/ATM is boring.
The best part of the book is in fact the LAN section.
Internet protocols are also well defined. Other strengths of the book:
1. A very smooth and progressive transition from the switched network discussion to the data networks discussion.
2. Some of the problems are pretty challenging and make you think beyond what you read in the book, some of the analytical problems are great.
3. Very analytical. Weaknesses:
1. Typical Stallings book, covers too much without going in the depth in any single topic.
2. The book spends almost equal time on all the technologies, some of the hot topics need to discussed more and the obsolete topics are not supposed to be discussed that much (typical Stallings) an example is token ring and ethernet have an equal amount of discussion, even though token ring is out.
3. The discussion on Fiber channel wherever is a joke, it is minimal and insufficient.
4. Too theoretical (stallings has done a much better work in his other work high-speed networks), but since this is the 1st book in networks, it is OK.
5. Very unpractical, you cant do anything more that you could not do before reading this book. The only thing that I learnt is how to identify the class of the network address (wow). So, if you ask me, IT is NOT a bible of computer networks. In fact, it should be recycled once you are done with it. But this is most definitely the 1st book on data networks, it has taught me more on any single topic than any other book I have read ever. The name of the book is misleading, it says "Data and compute networks" and then the book spends a good time on switched networks and also too much time on the signalling.
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