Internetworking with TCP/IP, Vol 1 [Hardcover]

It was through an earlier version [2nd edition], that I got my first detailed look at the internet structure. It is good to see that Comer continues his decades-long best selling text. It is aimed at engineers and programmers who have to understand and use and possibly develop applications that will run atop the internet.

Firstly, as with the earlier editions, there are comprehensive explanations of what the Internet Protocol means. Thence for the User Datagram Protocol and the Transmission Control Protocol. To most internet or web users, these are really meaningless terms. Not to you, after you have gone through this book. So, as a crucial example, you will understand the difference between UDP and TCP. And what the format of a TCP segment contains, like the source and destination ports and sequence numbers. Plus the TCP 3 way handshake protocol. The above has been well established and stable for over 15 years.

But Comer also brings in newer material. Like the Network Address Translation. A nifty kludge that can get around a shortage of IP addresses. Or, it can be used to furnish more privacy for machines inside a private net, that still need to communicate with the wider internet.

Even newer issues include VOIP. Leading into an analysis of the difficult real time problems of audio Quality of Service. The recent rise of Internet Telephony centres around successful resolution of these matters.

Finally, Comer concludes with a synopsis of the next generation of the internet - 128 bit addressing under IPv6. And how, apart from the vastly increased addressing, it promises to enable such features as protocol extensions and more elaborate address hierarchies. However, he prudently refrains from suggesting when IPv6 will be fully rolled out.

This book is written in a very readable style and yet covers vast ground in a concise way. Its organisation is excellent and the index finds references to the most useful sections quickly and accurately. The student will quickly gain insight into the protocols and operation at an advanced level, and the design engineer will gain the oversight to design excellent products. The references in each chapter provide good additional reading where extra depth is necessary, but are not required for most readers. It is a system designers book, not aimed at implementors of a TCP/IP stack, and this lack of reference to particular software constructs comes as a relief in todays publishing. The best book on this subject which I have read.

This review compares the following four books:
Computer Networks by Peterson and Davie (P & D)
Computer Networks by Tanenbaum
Computer Networks by Comer / Internetworking with TCP/IP
Computer Networking by Kurose and Ross (K & R)

By far the best book in the list is "Computer Networking" by Kurose and Ross. This book covers all of the essential material that is in the other books but manages to do so in a relevant and entertaining way. This book is very up to date as seen by the release of the 5th Ed when the 4th Ed is barely two years old. There are lots of practical exercises using wireshark and the companion website is actually useful and relevant. The attitude of this book with regard to teaching networking concepts could be summed up as "try it out and see for yourself". One interesting thing to note is that the socket programming example are all in Java.

Next up is the Peterson and Davie book which covers everything that Kurose and Ross discuss but is slightly more mathematical in how it goes about things. There are a lot more numerical examples and defining of formulas in this book which is fine by me and in no way detracts from the book. Also the socket programming examples are in C which is a little more traditional. The points where this text loses ground to K & R is that it doesn't have the practical application exercises that K & R has and it also doesn't extend the basic networking theory that is covered to modern protocols like K & R.

The two Comer books come next. Comer's "Computer Networks" book is probably the most introductory book out of this whole list and is more of a survey of networking topics that doesn't cover anything in any real depth. Still, this is an excellent book in that it is a quick clear read that is very lucid in its explanations and you can't help feeling that you understand everything that is covered in the book. Comer's TCP/IP book is the equivalent of the other authors' computer network books and in that respect it is pretty average. It covers all of the relevant material and in a manner which is more than readable but that is all. There is nothing exceptional about the book which stands out from the rest.

Last comes Tanenbaum's book from the author who is probably most famous for his OS books. This is probably the most technical and detailed of the books with lots of sample C code belying is experience with operating systems and their network stack code. The weak point of this book is that all of the code and technical minutia might prevent the reader from seeing the forest for the trees. Unless you are trying to learn how to program your own network stack for a Unix/Linux system, then I would get either the K & R book or the P & D book to learn networking for the first time. This book would best be served as a reference in which case the technical nature of the book becomes a benefit rather than detracting from the text.

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