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Though he didn't do the writing himself, Scott Mueller's involvement in Upgrading and Repairing Networks is evident in the thoroughness of the book's coverage and the quality with which documentation has been written and compiled. Like Mueller's highly respected books on personal computer hardware, this book treats its subject in great depth, acknowledging that information about older technologies is valuable to the significant numbers of people who still run those technologies. Pretty much every local area network (LAN) technology from the past 15 years--as well as the most popular internetworking technologies and the emerging wireless networking protocols--are documented here. Author Terry Ogletree explains how the technologies work in order to help you figure out where to turn when they're misbehaving. One difference between this book and the PC hardware book: this one is much less hardware-centric, focusing instead on software, protocols, and network services. Ogletree relies heavily on text, and takes time to explain everything from the histories of various protocols to Microsoft's design goals for Active Directory in Windows 2000 networks. Reading his text is rewarding, particularly if you have an appropriately networked system nearby with which you can investigate the features he points out. Operating system coverage is broad--Unix, Linux, NetWare, and Windows are all covered in turn--though most generic sections (such as those having to do with protocols) use Windows NT or Windows 2000 in their examples. --David Wall Topics covered: The state of the art in local and wide area networking technology (emphasis on LANs), and the older technologies that led us here. Physical network design, protocols, operating systems, and services all get attention. |
