Internet Core Protocols: The Definitive Guide [With CD-ROM]

by Eric A. Hall

Book Overview

If you've ever been responsible for a network, you know that sinking feeling: your pager has gone off at 2 a.m., the network is broken, and you can't figure out why by using a dial-in connection from home. You drive into the office, dig out your protocol analyzer, and spend the next four hours trying to put things back together before the staff shows up for work.

When this happens, you often find yourself looking at the low-level guts of the Internet...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1565925726
• ISBN13: 9781565925724
• Release Date: March 2000
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media
• Length: 464 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 7.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

An exemplary discussion of network and transport protocols

If you need to strengthen your knowledge of network-layer and transport-layer protocols (IP, ICMP, TCP and UDP), go no further than this book. Recommended. This is a critical reference. It's more readable than Comer or Stevens (and easily as complete) for learning about the network-layer and transport-layer protocols. For my money, this is the single most important book to have in this area. A sterling, untoppable effort from the O'Reilly label, and an absolute must for anyone learning about low-level internetworking.

Well done

The best thing about this book, which covers protocols like TCP and IP in detail, is that the discussion is from the ground-up, not from the top-down. I know what TCP/IP does for me at an application level, but I didn't know how TCP, or IP, or any of the other covered protocols, worked under the covers. Now I feel like I have a much better understanding of the details, which means I have a better understanding of a lot of things that are built on top of these protocols, as well as of system administration type tasks. Even the page after page of 'this bit field does this' text, which in most books would be rarely visited reference material, is decent, because individual reference sections contain real-world 'this means that' information. I would have liked a bit more discussion of Internet naming, IP address details, and so on, but I can find that information elsewhere.

best protocol book for admins

...this book isn't a good choice for beginners. For serious network managers and operators though, it's a great book to have for background info and diagnosis. I have been involved with data networks for 15 years (SNA, X.25, DECnet IPX and the rest), and would put this book in the same league as the other classics. The material is very well organized and easy to read, with lots of examples. I highly recommend it.

Great introduction to TCP/IP!

This book is true to its name as it covers the so-called Internet Core Protocols (TCP/IP, UDP, ARP, ICMP, and IGMP) very well. Chapter 1 is an overview of TCP/IP, Chapter 2 is an introduction to IP, and subsequent chapters describe the other protocols. The final chapter is a very detailed description of TCP. As an end-user who desired to learn more of the "basics" of these protocols, I learned quite a bit about how each protocol works.Each chapter describes the "inner workings" of each protocol, complete with sections on headers, messages, and so forth. Numerous screen captures help you gain further understanding of how each of these protocols works with each other. Not only is each protocol described well, there are also sections in each chapter on troubleshooting problems.The appendices describe how the Internet Standardization process, ie how RFC's (Request For Comments) get created and the processes they have to go through to be accepted. I had no idea what a long process it can be.If you're a System Administrator or someone who needs to learn the "basics" of TCP/IP, this is a great place to start.

An excellent book for the basic protocols.

This book, subtitled "An Owner's Manual for the Internet", does a very good work of explaining the core protocols - IP, ICMP, IGMP & multicasting, UDP, and TCP.Higher level protocols will, apparently, be covered in a future volume. Considering this volume quality, which follows O'Reilly's tradition of high standards, I cant wait for the second volume to come out.The readable & detailed explanations are accompanied by sample packet decodes (a lite version of the decoding is available on the accompanying CD), make the book an excellent study book for both students and network administrators.