Product Description

Computer Networking provides a top-down approach to this study by beginning with applications-level protocols and then working down the protocol stack. Focuses on a specific motivating example of a network-the Internet-as well as introducing students to protocols in a more theoretical context. New short "interlude" on "putting it all together" that follows the coverage of application, transport, network, and datalink layers ties together the various components of the Internet architecture and identifying aspects of the architecture that have made the Internet so successful. A new chapter covers wireless and mobile networking, including in-depth coverage of Wi-Fi, Mobile IP and GSM. Also included is expanded coverage on BGP, wireless security and DNS. This book is designed for readers who need to learn the fundamentals of computer networking. It also has extensive material, on the very latest technology, making it of great interest to networking professionals.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #50542 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 848 pages

Amazon.com Review
Certain data-communication protocols hog the spotlight, but all of them have a lot in common. Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach Featuring the Internet explains the engineering problems that are inherent in communicating digital information from point to point. The top-down approach mentioned in the subtitle means that the book starts at the top of the protocol stack--at the application layer--and works its way down through the other layers, until it reaches bare wire.

The authors, for the most part, shun the well-known seven-layer Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) protocol stack in favor of their own five-layer (application, transport, network, link, and physical) model. It's an effective approach that helps clear away some of the hand waving traditionally associated with the more obtuse layers in the OSI model. The approach is definitely theoretical--don't look here for instructions on configuring Windows 2000 or a Cisco router--but it's relevant to reality, and should help anyone who needs to understand networking as a programmer, system architect, or even administration guru.

The treatment of the network layer, at which routing takes place, is typical of the overall style. In discussing routing, authors James Kurose and Keith Ross explain (by way of lots of clear, definition-packed text) what routing protocols need to do: find the best route to a destination. Then they present the mathematics that determine the best path, show some code that implements those algorithms, and illustrate the logic by using excellent conceptual diagrams. Real-life implementations of the algorithms--including Internet Protocol (both IPv4 and IPv6) and several popular IP routing protocols--help you to make the transition from pure theory to networking technologies. --David Wall

Topics covered: The theory behind data networks, with thorough discussion of the problems that are posed at each level (the application layer gets plenty of attention). For each layer, there's academic coverage of networking problems and solutions, followed by discussion of real technologies. Special sections deal with network security and transmission of digital multimedia.

From the Publisher
Networking is much more than dry standards specifying message formats and protocol behaviors. Kurose and Ross focus on teaching the emerging principles of the field and then illustrate these principles with examples drawn from Internet architecture. The discussion is lively, engaging, topical, and up-to-date.

This book features a top-down organization with an early emphasis on applications. Studying application-level protocols first allows students to gain an intuitive feel for network protocols. The focus on application-layer paradigms (e.g., client server) and application programming interfaces allows students to get their "hands dirty" early-studying and implementing protocols in the context of applications they use daily. Proceeding though the layered network architecture in a top-down manner, one can first focus on the network services that are needed and then, in turn, study how these services can be provided.

This book provides a modern treatment of computer networking. 20 years ago, the HDLC protocol was considered "high-level." Today, there is an emphasis on services, applications and their transport needs, scalability, heterogeneity, performance, security, and manageability. This emphasis, which is driving today's advances, is woven throughout the book.

Each copy of this book comes with a prepaid six-month subscription to a companion website. This site includes the full text with an advanced searching feature and a hyper-linked index, Java applets to help demonstrate difficult concepts, links to up-to-date material, and complete supplements for qualified instructors of courses.

From the Back Cover
The most up-to-date introduction to the field of computer networking, this book's top-down approach starts at the application layer and works down the protocol stack. It also uses the Internet as the main example of networks. This all creates a book relevant to those interested in networking today. By starting at the application-layer and working down the protocol stack, this book provides a relevant introduction of important concepts. Based on the rationale that once a reader understands the applications of networks they can understand the network services needed to support these applications, this book takes a "top-down" approach that exposes readers first to a concrete application and then draws into some of the deeper issues surrounding networking. This book focuses on the Internet as opposed to addressing it as one of many computer network technologies, further motivating the study of the material. This book is designed for programmers who need to learn the fundamentals of computer networking. It also has extensive material making it of great interest to networking professionals.

Customer Reviews

Best introductory CS textbook ever
I'm a graduate student in Comp Sci, and I recently had the opportunity to take a networking class again just to refresh my basic knowledge (my dissertation topic isn't related to networks). It was a pleasant surprise for me that the class utilised this textbook. I have been at the university level in CS for 8+ years (grad + undergrad), and this book is *by far* the best introductory computer science textbook I have ever read in any CS subject.

The book is very well-written and extremely interesting to read. I was never bored in any chapter. Kurose and Ross are knowledgable experts in their field, and their exposition of the material is fantastic. Unlike Tanenbaum's book, they start at the application layer and move down. IMHO, this is a far better pedagogical strategy, because young students these days already have an excellent layer-5 understanding thanks to daily interaction with HTTP, IM, P2P file sharing, etc. If I remember correctly from my undergrad days, my own experience in a bottom-up approach, starting at the physical layer, really put me to sleep and put me off from networking. That's a shame, because networking is a really exciting field.

The best parts of the book are the breadth, thorough use of real-world topics, and the illustrations. In fact, the diagrams and illustrations are just plain great. Most technical writers often rely too much on the written word. Here, the authors augment almost every pair of pages with an illustration; this is simply remarkable. The explanations of fundamental topics (such as packet-switching, DNS, TCP congestion control, IP routing, and ethernet) are *extremely* clear. More advanced topics are very up-to-date, covering cutting-edge subjects such as P2P, CDNs, security, NATs, 802.11, RTP, etc. I have not found a better introductory explanation of CDNs anywhere else. Although networking does have a lot of math in various areas, this introductory book does not get too much in detail in mathematical discourse, making this book very readable. That's a fine approach in my opinion, as a deep mathematical analysis of various topics is best left for grad school or a professional job.

The authors' academic background really shows. Every topic is filled with citations/references to other work. This is great, because this book is just an introductory book with wide breadth but is otherwise lacking in significant depth. The interested reader (future grad student or network engineer?) can easily follow up on any topic he/she likes thanks to the exhaustive list of references.

As if all of that were not enough, there is an accompanying website that has interactive Java applets demonstrating various topics as well as a set of Powerpoint slides for download. Furthermore, I enjoyed the interchapter dialogues with various famous researchers in the field.

All in all, this is an outstanding book for the undergrad level, and I expect this would be a great book for professionals who want to have a firm grasp on networking fundamentals. I wish all my undergrad books were written as well as this one.

This book is a pleasure to read.
Our course, Networking and Data Communications, was assigned to me in the eleventh hour. Though I have been teaching Computer Science for 22 years I had not taught this course before. I chose this book because it seemed to be well written and had good support materials but, as we all know, there is no guarantee that the students will agree.

The course is over now and I just received the student evaluations of me, the text and the course. They were much better than I hoped for and I give the bulk of the credit to this textbook. Here are the three written comments from students regarding the book

"Book was good, approach was beneficial."

"The book for this course [Kurose,2000] was excellent. I recommend keeping it."

"The book was very useful, but the website could use some work."

Students are also asked to rate the book on a scale from 1 (difficult to understand) to 5 (Clear and easy to read). The book was rated as follows by the 22 students in the class: 8 fives, 13 fours, 1 three, 1 two and no ones. As an instructor, I found the book to be well written and well edited. Rarely did I find errors in the text and most of those that I did find were typographical errors. I found the web site to be especially useful. The discussions by other readers pointed out things to watch out for and gave me an easy way to make general preparations well in advance. I had my students do the first three lab assignments. They especially liked the two application layer assignments and had a good bit of trouble with the transport layer assignment. I found the supplied code to be well organized and the parts that were left out for the students to complete challenged them (and me) in the right directions. The approach of focusing on Internet networking was an excellent choice for an introduction to networking. The choice to start at the application layer and move down to the physical layer is natural and understandable. It drives home the whole idea of layered architectures well and is a great example of the power of top-down approaches.

I will follow the advice of the student that recommends we keep this text when I teach the course next year.

As any reader of this might guess, I highly recommend this text and ancillary materials for an introductory course in networking. I congratulate the authors and all that helped them on this project for the fine work they did.

networking for chimpanzees ...
I never read a book that was more clear then this one. Also while the book is rather theoretical, it contains so much real case studies and interesting facts that the reader keeps his motivation from the start to the end of the book. Here is a comparison with Tannenbaum 's famous book on computer networking.

-Both books go deep and give fairly rigorous explantion without too much mathematics. Only some basic math and basic probablility is required like binomial distributions etc ...(remark however these books do not delve into the details of mathematical queueing models etc ...)
-This book is very up-to-date with the latest internet technologies like point-to-point file sharing, streaming and multimedia. Tannnenbaum does not contain the latest developments in these fields.
-The physical layer is explained in more details in Tannenbaum.
Other layers are explained with the same level of details in both books.
-This book reads better then Tannenbaum without sacrifying rigour. It contains also much more real-life case-studies.
-The concepts in this book are explained in a much clearer way then Tannenbaum. I perceived Tannenbaum as sometimes confusing. The authors of this book have so good didactic skills that they could explain complex networking topics to chimpansees....

Conclusion : this is the only book I know in computer networks that goes deep enough and explains the concepts in a clear way...If you are looking for the best book on computer networking, stop looking : here it is !!!.