Building Service Provider Networks (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

To be competitive, service providers cannot customize every installation but must simultaneously offer services that meet a wide range of perceived customer needs. This guide shows commercial service providers and equipment vendors how to build competitive service offerings for enterprise-specific needs.
* Provides vital technical and business guidance to the service provider marketplace
* Explains how to satisfy the customer's specific needs in data, voice, and/or video
* Enables readers to gain the upper hand in submitting the most competitive service network bids and service level guarantees to customers

From the Back Cover

Learn how to gain the edge of providing the most reliable service-level guarantees to customers

Network and service provider engineers are often faced with the difficult challenge of meeting a less-than-logical service need of a customer–– and at the most reasonable price. In this book, Howard Berkowitz shows network and service providers how to customize their services to meet the specific requirements of the customer, whether for data, voice, or video. This detailed guide focuses on perceived customer requirements and then takes you through the necessary steps of deploying services accordingly by addressing the architecture, limitations, and capabilities of the existing telecommunications infrastructure.

Once the customer’s requests have been translated into technical requirements, Berkowitz introduces you to policy specification language and offers an extensive discussion of obtaining and managing address space. With case studies scattered throughout the book illustrating the increasing amount of detail that each step brings to the technical specification, you will gain a better understanding of the transition from the world of conceptual requirements to the real facilities of telecommunications carriers. From there, you will learn:

• The physical and data link facilities at the increasingly complex provider edge
• Core transmission technologies
• Functionality of the Border Gateway Protocol, Version 4 (BGP-4), and its applicability to specific customer requirements
• The design of the carrier Point of Presence (POP)
• Revolutionary changes in scalability to the intraprovider core
• Interprovider connectivity and Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and extending the network beyond a single provider

Wiley Computer Publishing. Timely. Practical. Reliable.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 592 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1st edition (May 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471099228
• ISBN-13: 978-0471099222
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,097,536 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Too bad so many startups never read this book, December 13, 2002

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

Howard Berkowitz is known in the networking community for his writing which has helped many, many people earn advanced certifications. But Howard doesn't write to that goal; he writes, instead, to the goal of helping people understand what it takes to make a network actually perform and deliver the business function it was purchased for. This is another in that series of lucid and focused books.

BSPN looks at the problem from the point of view of the engineer or technical manager who needs to deliver a service provider network--an ISP, ASP, etc. Over the course of the book, he uses a few fictitious businesses to demonstrate how a service provider could feasibly meet their needs. The content starts with the problem to be solved--as it always should--and progresses to how the promises are worded (Service Level Agreements, etc.), and on into the technical considerations that go into putting such a service in place.

As usual, he peppers the book with enough real stories to lend perspective to the thinking you have to do in planning networking (though most of don't plan for an adult male tiger "marking" the equipment). His diagrams are generally conceptual rather than using icons for different networking devices. After all, if you understand the logic, you can apply the best business equipment choice for the job you need to do.

And that is what this book is there for--to help you profitably provide a customer with the service they need. In these business times, that's a value.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Overview, October 23, 2003

By	John (Denver, CO) - See all my reviews

Howard's book is an excellent overview of a number of service provider issues and technology. For myself, it helped me to wade through the morass of VPN technologies on the market when we were researching the replacement of our frame relay network. If you have an interest in the issues faced by service providers, or if you would like to learn more about wide area network technologies, then this book is a must-read. Howard's sense of humor and insightful anecdotes make this an especially easy read, despite the high technical content.