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Book Review: Networking For System Administrators
Saint Aardvark writes Michael W. Lucas has been writing technical books for a long time, drawing on his experience as both a system and a network administrator. He has mastered the art of making it both easy and enjoyable to inhale large amounts of information; that's my way of saying he writes books well and he's a funny guy. Networking for System Administrators, available both in DRM-free ebook and dead tree formats, is his latest book, and it's no exception to this trend. Keep reading for the rest of Saint Aardvark's review.
Networking for Systems Administrators
author
Michael W. Lucas
pages
206
publisher
Tilted Windmill Press
rating
9/10
reviewer
Saint Aardvark
ISBN
0692376941
summary
Explains networking to sysadmins - both juniors new to this career, and those who have been around for a while
Like the title suggests, this book explains networking to sysadmins — both juniors new to this career, and those who have been around for a while but don't understand how those network folks live or what they need to do their job. If you're one of the latter, you might think "Oh I've read 'TCP/IP Illustrated' — I don't need another networking book." And it's true that there is overlap between these two books. But Lucas also explains about how to work with network folks: dealing with areas of shared responsibility, how to understand where your side ends, and how to talk to a network admin so that everyone understands each other — and more importantly, is both able and happy to help the other. This is something that is out-of-scope for a network textbook, and it's valuable.
So what's in this book? Lucas takes us through all the network layers, explaining how everything fits together. From physical ("If you can trip over it, snag it, break the stupid tab off the plastic connector at its end, or broadcast static over it, it's the physical layer.") to transport and application, he shows practical examples of how the OSI model maps (or doesn't) to the world of TCP/IP. He shows the happy path and the sad path at each layer, explaining how to understand what's going on and troubleshooting failures. This is the part with the strongest overlap with those other network textbooks. If system administration is a side gig (maybe you're a developer who has to maintain your own server), you'll have enough in this book to deal with just about anything you're likely to trip over. But if you're early in your sysadmin career, or you find yourself making the jump to Ops, you will want to follow it up with TCP/IP Illustrated for the additional depth.
Since you'll be troubleshooting, you'll need to know the tools that let you dump DNS, peer into packets, and list what's listening (or not) on the network. Lucas covers Linux and Unix, of course, but he also covers Windows — particularly handy if, like me, you've stuck to one side over the course of your career. Tcpdump/Windump, arp, netstat, netcat and ifconfig are all covered here, but more importantly you'll also learn how to understand what they tell you, and how to relay that information to network administrators.
That thought leads to the final chapter of this book: a plea for working as a team, even when you're not on the same team. Bad things come from network and systems folks not understanding each other. Good things — happy workplaces, successful careers, thriving companies and new friends — can come from something as simple as saying "Well, I don't know if it is the network's fault...why don't we test and find out?"
After reading this book, you'll have a strong footing in networking. Lucas explains concepts in practical ways; he makes sure to teach tools in both Unix/Linux and Windows; and he gives you the terms you'll use to explain what you're seeing to the network folks. Along the way there's a lot of hard-won knowledge sprinkled throughout (leave autonegotiation on — it's a lot better than it used to be; replace cables if there's any hint of flakiness in a server's network connection) that, for me at least (and be honest, you too) would have saved a lot of time over the years.
Who would I recommend this book to?
So what's in this book? Lucas takes us through all the network layers, explaining how everything fits together. From physical ("If you can trip over it, snag it, break the stupid tab off the plastic connector at its end, or broadcast static over it, it's the physical layer.") to transport and application, he shows practical examples of how the OSI model maps (or doesn't) to the world of TCP/IP. He shows the happy path and the sad path at each layer, explaining how to understand what's going on and troubleshooting failures. This is the part with the strongest overlap with those other network textbooks. If system administration is a side gig (maybe you're a developer who has to maintain your own server), you'll have enough in this book to deal with just about anything you're likely to trip over. But if you're early in your sysadmin career, or you find yourself making the jump to Ops, you will want to follow it up with TCP/IP Illustrated for the additional depth.
Since you'll be troubleshooting, you'll need to know the tools that let you dump DNS, peer into packets, and list what's listening (or not) on the network. Lucas covers Linux and Unix, of course, but he also covers Windows — particularly handy if, like me, you've stuck to one side over the course of your career. Tcpdump/Windump, arp, netstat, netcat and ifconfig are all covered here, but more importantly you'll also learn how to understand what they tell you, and how to relay that information to network administrators.
That thought leads to the final chapter of this book: a plea for working as a team, even when you're not on the same team. Bad things come from network and systems folks not understanding each other. Good things — happy workplaces, successful careers, thriving companies and new friends — can come from something as simple as saying "Well, I don't know if it is the network's fault...why don't we test and find out?"
After reading this book, you'll have a strong footing in networking. Lucas explains concepts in practical ways; he makes sure to teach tools in both Unix/Linux and Windows; and he gives you the terms you'll use to explain what you're seeing to the network folks. Along the way there's a lot of hard-won knowledge sprinkled throughout (leave autonegotiation on — it's a lot better than it used to be; replace cables if there's any hint of flakiness in a server's network connection) that, for me at least (and be honest, you too) would have saved a lot of time over the years.
Who would I recommend this book to?
- If you're a sysadmin at the beginning of your career, this book is an excellent beginning; take it, read it, and build on it — both with practical experience and further reading.
- If you're coming into system administration the back way (as a developer who has to manage their own server, say, or who shares responsibility for a networked service with other admins), I can't think of a better single source for the practical knowledge you need. You'll gain an understanding of what's going on under the hood, how to diagnose problems you encounter, and how to talk to either system or network administrators about fixing those problems.
- If you're a manager or senior sysadmin, buy this book and read it through before handing it to the juniors on your team, or that dev who keeps asking questions about routing and the firewall; you may learn a few things, and it's always good to read fine technical writing.
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If there really is a "network problem" then it won't be just your machine that cannot connect to some other machine.
Sure, if your network is just a couple of dumb switches and a single rule "Drop Inbound" firewall, but if that's the case you probably don't even have a Network Administrator to talk to. But if your network has dozens of VLANs, multiple gateways and complex firewall rules, it very well could be a network issue that so far only you have experienced. Sure, the problem is probably not Machine X can't connect to Machine Y, and more likely to be VLAN 17 can't initiate a connection to VLAN 56 over port 8080, but maybe you're the only one at your company who needs to make that particular connection at that time. And the basic idea of the book is to give sysadmins some ability to differentiate between application issues and network issues. In my example, if VLAN 17 and VLAN 56 are QA networks, there's a reasonable chance your network team won't give a shit and it'll take them a week to even take a look, so it's probably worthwhile as a sysadmin to make sure that A) Machine X is actually sending the data out the network interface and B) Machine Y isn't receiving the data and just discarding it.
The network is part of the system.
SAs had better understand networking, I don't expect/demand Cisco certs, but basic understanding of networking is a requirement of the job.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
And you call it in and the network engineer will ask some questions:
a1. Has this ever worked in the past? (they will always answer "yes")
a2. When was the last time you know it was working? (50% "yesterday" 50% "last week")
a3. Has anything changed on the boxes or were they moved? (100% no nothing same as always)
b1. Is this a new install? (95% of the time this will be the problem but they will only admit it 1% of the time)
And the change control logs should IMMEDIATELY show you where the problem is, in that case.
That's the problem. Change control shows no changes on 17 or 56 in the last 6 months.
The alarm systems show no changes.
I can pull up the data on the ports X & Y are using in 30 seconds. No errors showing.
In another 30 seconds I can check all the stats for 17 & 56.
The network is SIMPLE! It really is. Troubleshooting a connection issue takes a few minutes at most.
In your example, the sysadmin will just say "the network is the problem" when the REAL PROBLEM is that the LATEST UPDATE of his app means it now listens on 443 instead of 8080.
And a quick Google search will bring up page after page of references to that just using the app name and the app version number.
They shouldn't be SAs then. As GP said, I don't expect Cisco certification, but there is a level of knowledge of networks that a competent SA should have.