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A New TCP/IP Classic
FrazzledDad writes "Network geeks and developers working in the TCP/IP domain are most likely familiar with Douglas Comer's Internetworking With TCP/IP Vol.1. Comer's book was central for my understanding of how things really worked in the small corner of a world-wide network I use to manage. Charles Kozierok's The TCP/IP Guide has knocked Comer's book off my shelf. Kozierok's weighty book (1600 pages!) does a terrific job both as a reference and as a learning aid." Read on for Jim's review.
The TCP/IP Guide: A Comprehensive, Illustrated Internet Protocols Reference
author
Charles Kozierok
pages
1616
publisher
No Starch Press
rating
9/10
reviewer
Jim Holmes
ISBN
159327047X
summary
Amazing broad, deep coverage of TCP/IP in an understandable fashion.
Kozierok spent at least four years working full-time on this book, according to the dedication, and it shows. He covers everything from networking fundamentals to individual application protocols such as Gopher.
Do you need to familiarize yourself with Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) routing protocol basics? It's covered. Do you need to understand the pros and cons of Network Address Translation, and how static and dynamic mappings work? It's covered. Do you want the nitty gritty of how message formats are laid out? It's covered.
Kozierok also presents several chapters specifically on IPv6, laying out changes in the new version before diving into the nuts and bolts of it. He discusses the major additions, and dedicates an entire chapter to the new addressing scheme. The transition from IPv4 to IPv6 is a well-written section talking about the difficult conversion between the two versions.
THE BOOK AS A LEARNING GUIDE
TCP/IP can be a rather dry topic to read about when trying to learn portions of it. Let's face it: reading about BOOTP's messaging over UDP is not something most folks will give up a Friday night on the town for. OK, Kozierok's writing style won't make that happen, but he does keep things interesting and flowing well enough that working one's way through such topics is actually entertaining instead of torture.
For example, Chapter 18's discussion of subnetting concepts lays out the fundamentals in clear order without sliding into unfathomable academic blabberspeak. His use of "Key Concept" boxes throughout the book helps point out important items.
Just as important to the book's clarity and usefulness are the amazing graphics. In the Acknowledgments Kozierok specifically thanks the folks at SmartDraw.com for their illustrating package. He's put the tool to fantastic use for everything from breaking out the control bits from a TCP segment header to showing how iterative DNS name resolution works.
THE BOOK AS A REFERENCE
The level of detail in the book makes it a valuable reference in addition to its role as a learning guide. For example, readers can find specifics on details of SNMP data types, NFS server procedures, or TCP segment format layout. Additionally, Kozierok discusses many of the various TCP/IP utilities, such as using "netstat" for troubleshooting with a detailed discussion of various outputs.
Kozierok must have spent a lot of time figuring out how to best lay out the book, and it pays off with sensible organization. Two tables of content, one brief and one detailed (32 pages!), help one to get to the right spot to look up needed information. The index is nearly 50 pages and seems to be quite exhaustive; another great tool for getting to the right spot. There are also comprehensive lists of Figures and Tables if you're trying to access something via that route.
WHAT IT DOESN'T COVER
Kozierok is upfront about things he's left out of the book. You'll need to look elsewhere (back to Comer's book, perhaps) for details on TCP/IP in ATM networks, security and firewall design, and the lower levels of socket usage.
CONCLUSION
To me, a significant advantage of this book is No Starch's binding system that they make so much hay about. I can open this massive book to any point and leave it flat on the table. Pretty impressive!
Kozierok also has a companion website (www.TCPIPGuide.com) with errata, a FAQ, and various other areas. You can also purchase an electronic copy of the book.
The TCP/IP Guide is a tremendous work, and it's a significant resource for anyone working with TCP/IP."
You can purchase The TCP/IP Guide: A Comprehensive, Illustrated Internet Protocols Reference from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Kozierok spent at least four years working full-time on this book, according to the dedication, and it shows. He covers everything from networking fundamentals to individual application protocols such as Gopher.
Do you need to familiarize yourself with Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) routing protocol basics? It's covered. Do you need to understand the pros and cons of Network Address Translation, and how static and dynamic mappings work? It's covered. Do you want the nitty gritty of how message formats are laid out? It's covered.
Kozierok also presents several chapters specifically on IPv6, laying out changes in the new version before diving into the nuts and bolts of it. He discusses the major additions, and dedicates an entire chapter to the new addressing scheme. The transition from IPv4 to IPv6 is a well-written section talking about the difficult conversion between the two versions.
THE BOOK AS A LEARNING GUIDE
TCP/IP can be a rather dry topic to read about when trying to learn portions of it. Let's face it: reading about BOOTP's messaging over UDP is not something most folks will give up a Friday night on the town for. OK, Kozierok's writing style won't make that happen, but he does keep things interesting and flowing well enough that working one's way through such topics is actually entertaining instead of torture.
For example, Chapter 18's discussion of subnetting concepts lays out the fundamentals in clear order without sliding into unfathomable academic blabberspeak. His use of "Key Concept" boxes throughout the book helps point out important items.
Just as important to the book's clarity and usefulness are the amazing graphics. In the Acknowledgments Kozierok specifically thanks the folks at SmartDraw.com for their illustrating package. He's put the tool to fantastic use for everything from breaking out the control bits from a TCP segment header to showing how iterative DNS name resolution works.
THE BOOK AS A REFERENCE
The level of detail in the book makes it a valuable reference in addition to its role as a learning guide. For example, readers can find specifics on details of SNMP data types, NFS server procedures, or TCP segment format layout. Additionally, Kozierok discusses many of the various TCP/IP utilities, such as using "netstat" for troubleshooting with a detailed discussion of various outputs.
Kozierok must have spent a lot of time figuring out how to best lay out the book, and it pays off with sensible organization. Two tables of content, one brief and one detailed (32 pages!), help one to get to the right spot to look up needed information. The index is nearly 50 pages and seems to be quite exhaustive; another great tool for getting to the right spot. There are also comprehensive lists of Figures and Tables if you're trying to access something via that route.
WHAT IT DOESN'T COVER
Kozierok is upfront about things he's left out of the book. You'll need to look elsewhere (back to Comer's book, perhaps) for details on TCP/IP in ATM networks, security and firewall design, and the lower levels of socket usage.
CONCLUSION
To me, a significant advantage of this book is No Starch's binding system that they make so much hay about. I can open this massive book to any point and leave it flat on the table. Pretty impressive!
Kozierok also has a companion website (www.TCPIPGuide.com) with errata, a FAQ, and various other areas. You can also purchase an electronic copy of the book.
The TCP/IP Guide is a tremendous work, and it's a significant resource for anyone working with TCP/IP."
You can purchase The TCP/IP Guide: A Comprehensive, Illustrated Internet Protocols Reference from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Whats wrong with TCP/IP illustrated, 1,2 and 3?
Theres only so many books you can read on the subject - no matter how hard core you are.
Why UNIX?
> Network geeks and developers working in the TCP/IP domain are most likely > familiar with Douglas Comer's Internetworking With TCP/IP Vol.1
No, dude. We read "TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1" by Richard Stevens. The bible.
4.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
I thought it was
1. Read books about IP on Friday nights
2. ???
3. Profit!
Save yourself almost THIRTY ($30) BUCKS by buying the book here: The TCP/IP Guide: A Comprehensive, Illustrated Internet Protocols Reference. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!
2. IPv5
Now, I always heard that Comer was the last word, and I picked up the three volumes years ago, and on and off have worked at them.
However, in a phone interview recently, I was told that the tear-down on a TCP/IP session was a four-way handshake. Websites I was pointed also said this. But when I go to the Comer, Vol. 1, it says that it's actually a six-way: a three-way from the originator, and a three-way from the recipient.
Which, of course, leads me to wonder about his accuracy.
mark "and the O'Reilly TCP/IP book says three-way...."
IPv6??? WTF???
We just finished upgrading to IPv5, and it cost us nearly $1.2 million
That's the last time we hire "Dogbert IT Services"
The best documentation on TCP/IP is the RFCs themselves, especially anything written or edited by Jon Postel.
Why wade through someone else's interpretation when the specifications themselves are so good and freely available?
It's twenty bucks cheaper on Amazon
I didn't knock only one book off my shelf, it knocked all of them off - when it pulled the entire bookcase off the wall...
/The last time I read over a 1,000 pages from one author, it wasn't worth it.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Skip the foreplay.
THE TCP/IP bible is TCP/IP Illustrated Volume 2 by the late W. Richard Stevens.
He covers everything from networking fundamentals to individual application protocols such as Gopher.
And is coverage of Gopher supposed to be a selling point for this book??
I haven't used Gopher since... well, actually, I never used Gopher for anything other than idle curiousity to see what the hell it was. The Web made Gopher completely obsolescent.
Talk about a way to pigeonhole your book as "old news".
Coverage of bittorrent would be far more interesting and relevant.
And the full contents of this book, including BOOTP Client/Server Messaging and Addressing are really entirely available on its ADdicting website as it seems to claim!?!
There are no WiFi PDA's that use TCP/IP. They all use either UDP or ATM. Maybe some will come out in 2006 but I am not holding my breath!
I wrote to him to discuss something I'd noticed in the IPv6 sections, and he wrote back. It was very nice to discuss it with him directly, and I'll gladly echo the fact that his work is both easy to read and informative.
I've read a LOT of networking crap over the 25 years I've been doing computer networking, this ease of reading is not common to the genre.
His work is also online:
http://www.tcpipguide.com/free/index.htm
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Just curious... Why does one need a book (especially 1600 pages long)? Does it cover something that's not in the RFCs?
' s-face-on the-cover books that the MSofties have on their desks collecting dust?
I guess what I'm thinking is that TCP/IP networking is hardly rocket science. Surely the basics can be described in just a few pages. For everything else, you're going to have to look at specs anyway.
Am I missing something? Or are network prototcol programmers jealous of the multi-thousand-page-red-softcover-with-the-author
uhm, any pda with wifi capabilities can be used to 'telnet around'. What you need to do is find an application that will allow you to do that.
For PocketPC and WindowsMobile devices, try looking for PocketPutty on google. It does telnet, ssh1, and ssh2.
"How long does it take to download The TCP/IP Guide?
About 2.5 hours using a 28.8kbps dialup modem; about 1.3 hours at 50kbps; about 8 minutes with 500kbps broadband." (http://www.tcpipguide.com/faq.htm)
Has anyone seen a 28.8kbps modem lately? I thought they were extinct.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
"Internetworking with TCP/IP" is good, but "TCP/IP Illustrated v.1" is outstanding.
For many years until a RFC was published, the "official" reference (for example, to quote in an article or book) about TCP's fast retransmit and fast recovery was Stevens' book, unless you wanted to quote the original Usenet post for Van Jacobson.
I realize that Slashdot is "News for Nerds," but calling any TCP/IP book a "classic" is where I draw the line. Now, back to NOVA....
He makes the material available gratis on his website and if you buy direct from him you pay only $5 more than amazon and you get a CD of the PDFs and he'll autograph it on request.
Why not kick back a few bucks his way to reward him for his good work?
It is worth mentioning (since the reviewer didn't) that the book is available free online in HTML format. Start with the table of contents. He also sells (erm, "licenses") PDFs for $35, though I'd rather buy the book itself for $50 at Amazon. The HTML version has those annoying fake-link ads that pop up sundry advertisements when you mouse over them, but I still commend him for posting the book. I have bookmarked it for future reference, and I'll likely buy the book if it proves more useful than the RFCs next time I need it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Did this book cover QoS? What about SIP? Any good recommendations on books that cover those two areas?
The VAX/VMS Orange books used to fill an entire bookcase.
Now *those* were manuals.
Danged useful, too.
Still the standard, in my book.
As much as I love *nix, it still falls way short
of VMS in a couple of areas, and one is good documentation.
Oh, and saying *nix falls short of VMS in a couple of areas is like saying DOS falls short of *nix in a couple of areas...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
thank you IBM - its a fantastic resource and reference.
the only one commonly available off the shelf is the not-so-humble Sharp Zaurus.
www.oesf.org for more information
Steven;s books are good. I thnk he's UNIX NETWORK Programming volume 1 is newer the the tcp book and has UDP and other good stuff. Vol 2 in Interprocess Communication. Invaluable.
My main complaint with those books the example code uses his own libraries. Which is fine for brevity but can be a little confusing. Also not the easiest to learn from, but great when you know enough.
Check it out
Although not technically a PDA (it's an Internet Tablet - a PDA without PIM functions), the Nokia 770 is a fun toy. I got one on the developers program, and have been playing with it for about a month. The screen is gorgeous and it runs Linux/X11. They have 802.11g support as well as bluetooth for connecting via a mobile 'phone.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Telnet over that Treo 650:
http://www.conklinsystems.com/palm/online.php
I love it when dolts who have never done anything criticize folks with actual achievements. Talk is cheap- I challenge you to write a 200-page book that covers the same material thoroughly. Tell ya what- I don't feel like waiting, 'cause even 200 pages takes time. I challenge you to authoritatively teach one thing, like the snm protocol, in 1000 words, or whatever you think you need. Post a link to it here, I'll check back. you won't, and you'll make excuses is my prediction.
we will end no whine before its time
I haven't seen this book, but I did like the Comer's one, and personally I don't like the Stevens' one -- mostly because it's too thick. With the technical books like these it is very easy to stray away from concepts explanation into dull recital of RFCs/manpages/etc. growing your book's pages count, but making it less useful. From the review, I understand that this new one has a similar tendency. Did it knock the Comer's book of your shelf just because it had a heavier weight then? Or for some other reason? If you mention Comer, I'd like you to compare this book to his; and also (for those Stevens' fans) to the TCP/IP illustrated as well.
VKh
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A New Classic?
From the Oxford American Dictionary:
classic |klasik| adjective judged over a period of time to be of the highest quality and outstanding of its kind.
Heck, it has been almost 3 months.
Darn. As useful as this looks, I was hoping that we'd finally have an update of that famous TCP-IP classic, Ping the Duck . (Hint: read the top-rated review)
No, network professionals are (or should be) familiar with W. Richard Stevens' "TCP/IP Illustrated" and "UNIX Network Programming" books and Cisco's "Routing TCP/IP" book.
Not a three-man grease party
Well considering the time (and space) based nature of networking. Getting away from books (and their limitations) and towards a more dynamic form of presentation would be best. We already try for this by buying all this hardware, and downloading lots of software. All so we can sit with our networking books propped right next to it.
The above is absolutely true, and a great point. You'll likely spend LESS than with Amazon (the item is above $25, yet not eligible for Super Saver shipping AND they will slap a surcharge of almost $2 on it too, because the book is so heavy -- but the author will include shipping). Make sure to mod parent up so more people can take advantage of this offer and reward the little guy for his hard work, for a change.
did the number of pages in a book tell a person that the book is good?
It was mounted on rails
From what I have read around, the Ruby manual is so hefty that lots of people have Ruby on rails.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
When i was in college, TCP/IP was just starting to get big. we were moving from Novel and BITNET (we were even a major BITNET to TCP/IP gateway). At first, i played with ftp sites, found ARCHIE. Then gopher, followed very quickly by the WWW. I played with gopher a bit, but being exposed to it around the same time as the WWW, it's limitations were very obvious. Eventually, gopher servers went away and the gopher protocol became nothing more than a way to DOS Netscape (gopher has no concept of content-type, so you can feed a huge pipe of junk to netscape, i remember gopher://machinename:19/ URLs for a while). Someone even came out witha 3D gopher. It was pure eye candy, a way of viewing a 2D (at best) topology in #D and waste processor cycles. And it crashed a lot.
I assume he took gopher as a moderately complicated protocol, something with meat on it, with real world implementations, but small enough to cover as chapters in a book rather thana volume in itself. HTTP 1.1 is way too complicated for a teaching tome now. Probably should have looked at HTTP 1.0, somewhat useful as both a building bridge to 1.1, and even today most servers and clients can back rev to HTTP 1.0.
No tech books were ever as clear as A.P.U.E and the Networking books from Stevens. There were giants in the earth in those days.
At 23 I'm just a youngin' so please excuse my ignorance. Aside from seemingly exhaustive documentation, what made VMS so great?
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
Mmmm nitpick time. You mean obsolete, rather than obsolescent.
If only someone else mentioned Veronica, the trilogy would be complete. Oh, wait...
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
- Automatic versioning in the FS.
- Support for structured files.
- A well-defined ABI that allowed code written in any (procedural) language to call libraries written in any other.
- Great clustering support.
- The kind of storage pooling that *NIX is only now getting with Sun's ZFS.
- A real security model (fine grained access control everywhere).
- Fine-grained control over more-or-less everything (e.g. you can set the maximum real memory usage of an individual process in VMS).
A lot of features that *NIX is now getting, and describing as new and shiny were in VMS from the start.I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Well, I scanned it in depth.
The gold standard is still "TCP/IP Illustrated", Stevens, even though it is getting somewhat long in the tooth. The Kozierok book is essentially all prose descriptions of how the TCP/IP stack works, no code. There is simply no replacement for Stevens if you need to figure out how the stack is dealing with multicast packets or dozens of other situations.
There are some questionable organizational choices, such as starting of with SLIP and PPP in the first chapters. And gopher is pretty quaint these days.
The Kozierok book is probably a better choice for undergrads and people new to networking. The Stevens book is for crusty, bearded, rainbow-suspenders wearing Unix guys, or those who want to be.