Data and Computer Communications, Seventh Edition

Author: William Stallings List Price: $100.00 Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price ISBN: 0131006819 Publisher: Prentice Hall (08 May, 2003) Edition: Hardcover Sales Rank: 81,874 Average Customer Rating: 3.44 out of 5

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Customer Reviews

But the math concepts are only introduced as they are needed, and you will need to find other places to learn the stuff you need there. I also noticed that some of the questions at the end of the chapters have answers that are nowhere to be found in the book. Strange, that. I guess it assumes you have an internet connection. Much, if not all of the material in this book can be found on the internet in greater detail free of charge. But that still does not mean that the book is useless. It depends on how much the purchase price means to you.

What this book does is gives you a framework that helps you know what to study, and what the major subject categories in this field are. And in some circles, it is very valuable that it also gives you the mathematical background behind what is going on.

I would imagine you could skip this one if you know what you need to learn. If the purchase price is daunting, you would probably be just as well off just using the table of contents of this book as the "list" of things to know about networking. This book appears to be some sort of standard in the colleges around this country and the world. Even though it may not fit your learning style, or you may not be big on math, there are countless folks using this book so it might be helpful in that way. It gives you an overview of the field. A big picture, so to speak.

In a way, this book, like many textbooks, ask the question of how important is your need to understand what other people are doing, even if it is not your specialty or your area of expertise.

This may be an excellent book for a manager of a large organization who wants to get an overview, WITH MATH, of the current networks and communications systems.

The first and the second parts of the book deals with the signalling and transmission media and also the basics of the data networks like data link control. I found these sections (mainly signalling) very weak and sub standard, but most of the CS students in the class were scratching their heads complaining that it was too complicated. The best thing in these sections is the data link control (just spectacular).

The remaining parts of the books have covered data networks. Now some seasoned networking person would find these parts very abstract and not enough depth in it, but a novice that I was in data networks, I loved it.
The three sections are:

WAN
LAN
Security and Internet and protocols

The discussion on WAN/ATM is boring.
The best part of the book is in fact the LAN section.
Internet protocols are also well defined.

Other strengths of the book:
1. A very smooth and progressive transition from the switched network discussion to the data networks discussion.
2. Some of the problems are pretty challenging and make you think beyond what you read in the book, some of the analytical problems are great.
3. Very analytical.

Weaknesses:
1. Typical Stallings book, covers too much without going in the depth in any single topic.
2. The book spends almost equal time on all the technologies, some of the hot topics need to discussed more and the obsolete topics are not supposed to be discussed that much (typical Stallings) an example is token ring and ethernet have an equal amount of discussion, even though token ring is out.
3. The discussion on Fiber channel wherever is a joke, it is minimal and insufficient.
4. Too theoretical (stallings has done a much better work in his other work high-speed networks), but since this is the 1st book in networks, it is OK.
5. Very unpractical, you cant do anything more that you could not do before reading this book. The only thing that I learnt is how to identify the class of the network address (wow).

So, if you ask me, IT is NOT a bible of computer networks. In fact, it should be recycled once you are done with it. But this is most definitely the 1st book on data networks, it has taught me more on any single topic than any other book I have read ever. The name of the book is misleading, it says "Data and compute networks" and then the book spends a good time on switched networks and also too much time on the signalling.

Maybe it is good for someone who know the topic well. But I absolutely think this is not good for beginners.

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