Customer Reviews

Internet Routing Architectures

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've read both editions of Halabi's book cover-to-cover and I was stunned to discover just how widely they expanded the excellent original material. Though the configuration examples are IOS-centric, you will have absolute mastery of BGP routing and its various topologies by the time you finish this book. You'll learn the particulars of redundancy and load balancing, with plenty of concrete examples that you can apply directly in your own networks (I did), how to configure Multihop and when you may need to do so, how to set up multihoming in all its permutations, filtering and route maps, and much much more, in just about every possible deployment. Among the advanced topics, you'll understand how confederations and route reflection work, and how confederations help consolidate large BGP topologies into more manageable units - and also their limitations. It's basically impossible for me to lay out every topic that is effectively discussed in this book.

If I had to choose one book for core networking topics, this would probably be the one.

Only a word, Buy IT!
If you want to know how internet works and how works on cisco router, You Must Buy IT.

mr halabi knows his material and has an easy-to-follow writing
style. however, this book does an inadequate job of providing
complete examples (especially community usage), which when
learning something as complex as bgp, are essential.
overall, it is a great book and i recommend it to experienced as
well as novice engineers, if for no other reason than the
discussion of some of the politics and history of internetwork
engineering (as well as some of the organizations/groups which

exist)
this book will teach you cisco's version of bgp - but when you
have cisco's marketshare, why not... you should alse read the
rfcs for bgp. before you think about trying to set-up bgp read
this, but also do some searching on the web for other resources
(the multihoming faq is very useful)

After a brief review of the history and evolution of the Internet, the author motivates the rest of the book by giving a set of questions to be asked by an organization who intends to connect to the Internet. Since at this time all businesses it seems want to do this, the answering of these questions will give them more helpful information on just what must be considered when choosing an ISP. The details of the routing architecture are of course the main emphasis in the book.

Some of the more important topics addressed in the book are: 1. IP subnetting and variable-length subnet masks and why they are useful. 2. The different strategies used to handle IP address space depletion, such as creative IP address allocation, classless interdomain routing (CIDR), private IP addressing, and the new IP version 6. In the discussion on CIDR, the author asserts the advantages of using aggregation, in that an Internet Service Provider can advertise one IP network rather than several individual advertisements. This, he says, results in more efficient routing strategies and propgation along with making the route advertisements more stable. The degree of the resulting efficiency is not really quantified by the author however. It would have been interesting to have real-life examples of the resulting gains, or examples taken from simulation modeling. Although such data might seem unnecessary now, since CIDR was proposed as a fix to the depletion problem, it would still be interesting to be able to understand in more detail the advantages of employing CIDR, and with comparing it the planned deployment of IPv6. 3. The discussion of distance vector routing and link-state routing and the advantages and disadvantages between the two. The reader interested in a more rigorous and quantitative comparision between the two routing protocols will not find it here, but such a comparison can be done via simulation modeling. 4. The representation of the BGP neighbor negotiation via a finite state machine. 5. The discussion of the TCP MD5 Signature Option, and its role in protecting BGP from spoofed TCP segments and TCP resets. 6. The building of peer sessions using BGP and how to implement it "internally" in an 'autonomous system.' Peer connections between routers in different autonomous systems are then "external" implementations of BGP. The autonomous systems as explained by the author can be used for example by two users who desire to have a link between them in case of a failure of their ISP. 7. The discussion on route instability and how to control it using aggregation, route dampening, and static route injection. The author spends an entire chapter in fact on the design of stable internets, although the discussion is brief and purely descriptive. The route dampening mechanism is discussed as a tool for controlling route instability. This involves a strategy for penalizing unstable routes and is implemented on CISCO routers (the author gives the commands for doing so explicitly). Although the author does not discuss any, modeling and empirical studies have indicated that a cavalier use of route dampening can be deleterious to a network. For example, it was shown early on in the use of BGP that a single route withdrawal may cause other routers to explore a sequence of alternative paths before deciding that the destination is unreachable. Some researchers have shown that this in turn causes "secondary flaps" which can suppress the threshold of the route flap damping algorithm, and resulting in delayed convergence of the route.

This book is a very well written and with no errors. The first 10 chapters are more theory and expanations. Chappters 11 and 12 include many mini labs with diagrams and configurations covering all you have to know about BGP. It is a great book for CCIE preparation concerning BGP. You can practice all the mini labs with 4-5 routers and serial connections (and ethernet or loopbacks). If you preparing for CCIE you should not attempt without conbining this book with the Solie Book (CCIE: Practical Studies - over 40 mini labs and 5 complete labs) and IPExpert CCIE workbook (Expensive but is Great !!! Includes many mini labs and over a dozen complete CCIE labs with solutions - ...

I give it 5 plus stars. This book, along with the info on CCO, should make you a BGP expert, and now you can talk on the same level with the big boys. Just an absolutely superb job by Halabi and McPherson. It is a duty for any Network Engineer to get his or her hand on this book.

Of all the books on networking I have ever read, this is in a league of its own. I have never seen such a complicated topic explained so well. Other authors who write networking books of this level, should speak to this guy on "how to write a book". It manages to join the dots from A to B to C ....etc. and never miss a thing. If you ever hear the word BGP mentioned at in your work place or someone says they are deploying it. buy this book and glue it to your hand. After Reading this book, you could sucessfully deploy a BGP network, no problems. In my opinion, lots of books out there on this level of networking aren't worth the paper there printed on.

For GOD sake, other authors wake up and pay attention.

This book is excellent. You should have a pretty good working knowledge of general networking. I would also really only recommend this book if you have a need to work with BGP and route the internet. But if that is your intention, then this book is perfect.

If you are looking for a book describing all the things which need to be taken care of when planning and implementing BGP then you will appreciate this book.
Mr Halabi provides a lot of example set-ups which are, for the people working in the Internet networking industry, very familiar. The examples range from a typical customer who wants BGP connectivity to multi-customer and international backbone configurations.
Aside from the many examples, which serve the text well in getting the material understood, Mr Halabi takes care to describe the fundamentals associated with it as well.
However, this is not a book for the faint at heart. Prior knowledge of IP and routing will be useful in order to appreciate this book.
Of course, this books focuses on the Cisco IOS architecture syntax, but the explanations and details will suit anyone willing to learn in-depth about BGP.
The other bible is [Juniper's] John W. Stewart's book: BGP4 Inter-Domain Routing in the Internet. Also a must-read. Having both books will tell you everything you need.

This is very good book on interdomain routing.The internet architecture is very well explained i.e vBNS, NAPs etc.The new reserach on IPing should have been included in detail & also more emphasis should have been given on MPLS & VPNs by using BGP.