Networking Concepts and Technology: A Designer's Resource

by Deepak Kakadia

Sun ONE solutions, and other services, depend tremendously on optimal network infrastructures. However, there is currently very little information available on how to successfully deploy a strategy based on Sun Networking solutions. Networking technologies have evolved and current basic books do not address the needs of customers who want to understand Sun Networking technology offerings and how to integrate them with advanced networking switching...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0131482076
• ISBN13: 9780131482074
• Release Date: July 2004
• Publisher: Prentice Hall
• Length: 357 Pages
• Weight: 1.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 7.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Excellent Book for Datacenter networks

This book seems to be a good reference for IT staff who want to better understand networking in the datacenter edge segment. This is the only networking book that I found that covers issues related to servers, network interface cards and the access switches and routers. The book covers important concepts in depth that are not found anywhere else. For example ch 3 describes how TCP tunable variables are grouped into functions such as flow control, congestion control and how they work. In particular this chapter describes how the data packets are impacted by the tcp tunable variables, using the Solaris implementation as example. I always see suggested tunable recommendations in the manuals, but they never explain how they work. This book is the first place where I was finally able to understand how these TCP tunables work. There is also a free sun blueprint available, that looks like came right out of this book, which is also available from informIT. It is not only an excellent description of how tcp tunables work, but helpful when optimizing performance. Ch 5 offered some good insights on how the gigabit ethernet device driver worked. I did not find this anywhere else. P.139 to 169 contained really nice insights on how the gigabit ethernet driver works, including the unique features of the NIC and driver, including a nice description of how packets are recieved and transmitted. This RX TX architecture on p.145 and related are not available anywhere else and was clearly written by an expert who probably wrote the driver himself. These days marketing staff are the ones writing print. Ch 6 and 7 was very useful to us, in the sense it gave us a great starting point for greenfield deployments of web based applications. We were able to leverage the designs and customize for our purposes. On p.326 I found the configs very useful. For example a desc on how to tie in the port availability to vrrp, allowing the router with the most available ports or links to the servers to be promoted to Master. It is insights like these that IT staff like myself, found to be very helpful and cleared up a few grey areas. In summary, this book is probably intended for IT datacenter staff who manage and design networks that fall into to the access layer segment. I want to understand how all the pieces work and inter relate, from the tcp stack, to network interface card to the L2 access switch(various patterns are offered) to the L3 default router(vrrp), appliances such as SSL, loadbalancing etc. This is the only book I found that actually compared several Load Balancers, Firewalls and SSL appliances and described how they work. I was able to understand and use it in our production network! This is pretty much the material required to deploy web based applications into a network infrastructure. Dave