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Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach Featuring the Internet
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Author: James F. Kurose, Keith W. Ross, James Kurose, Keith Ross
List Price: $97.00
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 0201976994
Publisher: Pearson Addison Wesley (17 July, 2002)
Edition: Hardcover
Sales Rank: 42,711
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5
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Customer ReviewsRating: 3 out of 5
Oversimplifies to point of sometimes being wrong
For the most part, Kurose and Ross do a decent job of discussing networks and expanding your knowledge. However, some information they oversimplify to the point of being wrong. For instance, in their discussion of sequence number and acknowledgement generation they break down the TCP 3-way handshake and how data transfer impacts acks. Unfortunately, they fail on how FIN impacts these computations. There are more situations like this in the book, such as IP offsets. It is as if you were putting together a jigsaw puzzle. However, someone has trimmed some of the more intricate pieces, in an attempt to facilitate the puzzle being put together a little quicker. Unfortunately, this action has robbed you of some important details of the picture, and in the end it confuses the situation rather than bringing clarity.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Be aware of the so-called "paperback edition"!
It's hard to believe that a "technical" book can be so captivating - I could hardly put it down once I start reading it. My only complaint is the price. However, look out for those who sell "Softcover Intl edition with exact same content". I made the mistake of trying to save some money and bought one, and the quality of the book was simply terrible - flimsy paper, ink shows through, and all the figures were in poor black-and-white copy (instead of the nice shades of gray with blue highlight). On the back of my book it says "For sale only in Indea...".
Rating: 5 out of 5
The right way to learn networking
After taking two classes in computer networking, one using this book - with a top-down approach, another with the down-up book, I have to say Kurose's method is superior.
Kurose takes a well drafted course thorugh the often murky waters of networking, and explains to you how the services you know - the web, e-mail, FTP - work, so that as you progress you will have the ability to understand why the underlying protocols do what they need to do. You understand what is needed to make the Internet work and getting the general perspective first and delving deeper as you go is a great, and sadly unique, way of doing things.
An excellent book for those in school or those just interested in learning how networking works.
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