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Computer Networks: A Systems Approach, Second Edition
Networking technologies and practices are constantly evolving. Equip your students with an understanding that helps them keep pace with Internet time.
In this carefully focused revision of the best-selling first edition, authors Peterson and Davie reiterate their commitment to a systems-oriented approach to networking instruction. Focusing on the "why" of network design" not just the specifications comprising today's systems but how key technologies and protocols actually work in the real world to solve specific problems" they promote an enduring, practical understanding of networks and their building blocks.
The second edition incorporates coverage of Quality of Service issues, mobile and wireless networks, VPNs, and much more. Over 100 new exercises help users consolidate and expand their knowledge.
No other textbook offers a more solid grounding for aspiring network professionals. Computer Networks: A Systems Approach gives your students the knowledge and perspective they need and gives you the tools you need to maximize their learning experience:
* Unparalleled instruction from an expert team of authors. The authors bring over 30 years of experience in networking research, development and teaching to the task of describing the principles and practical implementation of computer networks. Both have played key roles in defining and implementing many of the protocols discussed inside.
* Cutting-edge coverage. The second edition has been thoroughly updated to cover the most recent advances in networking, including:
* a new chapter on security techniques - PGP, IPSEC, secure sockets and firewalls
* a new chapter on application layer protocols - SMTP,HTTP, SNMP, DNS and RTP
* new material on wireless and mobile technology- spread spectrum techniques and 802.11
* new section on building VPN's on top of the public Internet
* Expanded treatment of key issues. Topics such as Internet routing, Quality of Service, congestion control, ATM, compression and multimedia communications now delve deeper to reflect changes that have taken place over the past four years.
* Effective pedagogical components. Alongside the authors' clear explanations and insights, you'll find pedagogical components that significantly enhance students' understanding:
* Problem statements" the practical design challenges met by the techniques covered in each chapter
* Shaded sidebars" explorations of advanced topics
* Highlighted summary paragraphs" distillations of key network design principles
* Open Issues" guided discussions of controversial networking issues
* Further reading" pointers to definitive papers related to each chapter's coverage
* Completely revamped end-of-chapter exercises The second edition offers over 100 new end-of-chapter exercises, the result of a substantial editing and development effort by a seasoned networking instructor, Peter Dordal of Loyola University.
* The optimal pedagogical approach. Encyclopedic and "layered" approaches cover required material but leave critical questions unanswered. Peterson and Davie focus on systems" how they interweave technology and technique to meet practical needs. Adding layer-focused considerations where necessary, the authors teach students why networks are designed as they are and cultivate the skills needed to build the networks of the future.
* Real-worldimplementation examples. New to this edition, operating system-independent C code is used with pseudocode to illustrate protocol implementation throughout. The first edition's x-kernel examples continue to be available online.
In this carefully focused revision of the best-selling first edition, authors Peterson and Davie reiterate their commitment to a systems-oriented approach to networking instruction. Focusing on the "why" of network design" not just the specifications comprising today's systems but how key technologies and protocols actually work in the real world to solve specific problems" they promote an enduring, practical understanding of networks and their building blocks.
The second edition incorporates coverage of Quality of Service issues, mobile and wireless networks, VPNs, and much more. Over 100 new exercises help users consolidate and expand their knowledge.
No other textbook offers a more solid grounding for aspiring network professionals. Computer Networks: A Systems Approach gives your students the knowledge and perspective they need and gives you the tools you need to maximize their learning experience:
* Unparalleled instruction from an expert team of authors. The authors bring over 30 years of experience in networking research, development and teaching to the task of describing the principles and practical implementation of computer networks. Both have played key roles in defining and implementing many of the protocols discussed inside.
* Cutting-edge coverage. The second edition has been thoroughly updated to cover the most recent advances in networking, including:
* a new chapter on security techniques - PGP, IPSEC, secure sockets and firewalls
* a new chapter on application layer protocols - SMTP,HTTP, SNMP, DNS and RTP
* new material on wireless and mobile technology- spread spectrum techniques and 802.11
* new section on building VPN's on top of the public Internet
* Expanded treatment of key issues. Topics such as Internet routing, Quality of Service, congestion control, ATM, compression and multimedia communications now delve deeper to reflect changes that have taken place over the past four years.
* Effective pedagogical components. Alongside the authors' clear explanations and insights, you'll find pedagogical components that significantly enhance students' understanding:
* Problem statements" the practical design challenges met by the techniques covered in each chapter
* Shaded sidebars" explorations of advanced topics
* Highlighted summary paragraphs" distillations of key network design principles
* Open Issues" guided discussions of controversial networking issues
* Further reading" pointers to definitive papers related to each chapter's coverage
* Completely revamped end-of-chapter exercises The second edition offers over 100 new end-of-chapter exercises, the result of a substantial editing and development effort by a seasoned networking instructor, Peter Dordal of Loyola University.
* The optimal pedagogical approach. Encyclopedic and "layered" approaches cover required material but leave critical questions unanswered. Peterson and Davie focus on systems" how they interweave technology and technique to meet practical needs. Adding layer-focused considerations where necessary, the authors teach students why networks are designed as they are and cultivate the skills needed to build the networks of the future.
* Real-worldimplementation examples. New to this edition, operating system-independent C code is used with pseudocode to illustrate protocol implementation throughout. The first edition's x-kernel examples continue to be available online.
749 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1996
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533 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
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December 13, 2019Note that this book can be legally and freely downloaded from https://www.academia.edu/32415264/_Larry_L._Peterson_Bruce_S._Davie_Computer_Netwo_BookFi_.
October 27, 2021
This is an excellent book and should be seriously considered as a classroom textbook or reference book for one or two introductory courses on computer networks for computer scientists, computer engineering or telecommunication engineers at an upper-division undergraduate or first year graduate level.
I taught a course on distributed systems back in the late 1980s and used Tanenbaum’s book on networks as one of the key references to provide an introduction to the seven layers of the ISO/OSI network model. In the 1990s I put the field aside and devoted myself to parallel computation. While I remained vaguely aware of advances in computer networks, I recently wanted to find a book that would allow me to develop a better feeling for the field in the 2010s. This book, published in 2012 fitted the bill perfectly. It is very readable and its separation of some material into introductory and advanced levels is very sensible, for example for switching, routing, and internetworking (chapter three contains the introductory material and chapter contains more advanced material such as BGP, IP version 6 and multicasting) and transport protocols which are covered in chapters 5 and 6 in a similar way, leaving the fascinating but more advanced topic of TCP congestion control algorithms to chapter 6.
I particularly enjoyed the “where are they now?” sidebars which focus on the success and failure of specific protocols in the real world.
There is some unevenness in the depth of coverage of different chapters, but I think this is to be expected in such a rich field -for example, I got the impression that there is more algorithmic detail in the first chapters (say up to chapter five). I also liked the attention given to wireless networks and the all too brief section on routing for mobile devices.
Each reader will probably enjoy some chapter more than others, according to his tastes, background and interests. In my case I very much enjoyed chapter 3 (Internetworking), 6 (congestion control though I found the more advanced sections quite an effort), 7 (end-to-end data, that is presentation level protocols), and particularly 9 (applications, which covers protocols for electronic mail, multimedia applications, name service, network management, and overlay networks) -perhaps it is not coincidental that these are the chapters that the authors state contain major new or substantially updated topics in the fifth edition:
Since I merely glanced at the exercises I will not venture an opinion on them, except to mention that the starred exercises certainly seem to be more for graduate than undergraduate students. I did not make use of the free downloadable network simulation software available for the book, although I confess I am still sorely tempted to try it out sometime in the future. The book includes loads of recommended further readings -the sheer amount will probably look excessively daunting for undergraduates and, at first glance -and I may well be mistaken here-, appear to favor key historical papers rather than more recent surveys of research work.
I taught a course on distributed systems back in the late 1980s and used Tanenbaum’s book on networks as one of the key references to provide an introduction to the seven layers of the ISO/OSI network model. In the 1990s I put the field aside and devoted myself to parallel computation. While I remained vaguely aware of advances in computer networks, I recently wanted to find a book that would allow me to develop a better feeling for the field in the 2010s. This book, published in 2012 fitted the bill perfectly. It is very readable and its separation of some material into introductory and advanced levels is very sensible, for example for switching, routing, and internetworking (chapter three contains the introductory material and chapter contains more advanced material such as BGP, IP version 6 and multicasting) and transport protocols which are covered in chapters 5 and 6 in a similar way, leaving the fascinating but more advanced topic of TCP congestion control algorithms to chapter 6.
I particularly enjoyed the “where are they now?” sidebars which focus on the success and failure of specific protocols in the real world.
There is some unevenness in the depth of coverage of different chapters, but I think this is to be expected in such a rich field -for example, I got the impression that there is more algorithmic detail in the first chapters (say up to chapter five). I also liked the attention given to wireless networks and the all too brief section on routing for mobile devices.
Each reader will probably enjoy some chapter more than others, according to his tastes, background and interests. In my case I very much enjoyed chapter 3 (Internetworking), 6 (congestion control though I found the more advanced sections quite an effort), 7 (end-to-end data, that is presentation level protocols), and particularly 9 (applications, which covers protocols for electronic mail, multimedia applications, name service, network management, and overlay networks) -perhaps it is not coincidental that these are the chapters that the authors state contain major new or substantially updated topics in the fifth edition:
- Updated material on wireless technology, particularly the various flavors of 802.11 (Wi-Fi) as well as cellular wireless technologies including the third generation (3G) and emerging 4G standards.I felt chapter 8 (Network security) was one of the least successful, and did not quite hit the sweet spot between excessive detail and sweeping vagueness. I do not consider the section on firewalls sufficiently complete and the example systems were, in my opinion, dealt with far too briefly. In my copy of the fifth edition, the equations in chapter 2 are missing operators (multiplication, division, subtraction and addition signs) which is really annoying. Why this should happen in a fifth edition is beyond me (this is not new material!) and whether all fifth editions have the same problem or whether this happens only for copies typeset by diacriTech, India is beyond me.
- Updated coverage of congestion control mechanisms, particularly for high bandwidth-delay product networks and wireless networks.
- Updated material on Web Services, including the SOAP and REST (Representational State Trnsfer) architectures.
- Expanded and updated coverage of interdomain routing and the border gateway protocol (BGP).
- Expanded coverage on protocols for multimedia applications such as voice over IP (VOIP) and video streaming.
Since I merely glanced at the exercises I will not venture an opinion on them, except to mention that the starred exercises certainly seem to be more for graduate than undergraduate students. I did not make use of the free downloadable network simulation software available for the book, although I confess I am still sorely tempted to try it out sometime in the future. The book includes loads of recommended further readings -the sheer amount will probably look excessively daunting for undergraduates and, at first glance -and I may well be mistaken here-, appear to favor key historical papers rather than more recent surveys of research work.
February 17, 2010
Textbook for computer networks course
September 3, 2019
This book roughly follows a bottom-up structure similar to Computer Networks. But instead of strictly traversing the OSI-TCP/IP network stack, Computer Networks: A Systems Approach is written from the perspective of systems, their components, and their requirements. This makes it easier to understand how they interact, and how that affects today's network(ed) applications. A downside of this approach is that the reader needs to put in more effort to create a mental model in which to place all this knowledge.
I like the book. I think it would work well for a bachelor-level Computer Networks course. To improve further, I think the book could benefit from a larger focus on applications. Using one or multiple running examples throughout the book could make it easier to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of different components and designs.
I like the book. I think it would work well for a bachelor-level Computer Networks course. To improve further, I think the book could benefit from a larger focus on applications. Using one or multiple running examples throughout the book could make it easier to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of different components and designs.
May 1, 2020
I found this to be an extremely helpful overview of the topic as a reader with a reasonable background in general computing but very little background in networking specifically. While a few years old at this point, the edition does not feel particularly dated, and most of the core protocols described are still in use (or even more relevant than when the book was published, in some cases). Provides plenty of good references to more specific technical topics in each chapter to pick and choose from.
August 31, 2024
Can't really fault this book. Very informative and well explained. This edition is 20 years old but given the technology being discussed is still in use today it's still very relevant.
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January 1, 2009This is one of the best book while u are trying to make some understanding of computer network
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October 20, 2009More fun computer stuff..
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April 17, 2010"Computer Networks: A Systems Approach, 3rd Edition (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Networking) by Larry L. Peterson (2003)"
April 28, 2015
This is a truly amazing book that explains most little details about how the network protocols really works. If you want to understand networking, this is the book.
February 27, 2016
Though not abysmal but provides a strong training for the deep dive. A must read book for computer networks enthusiast.
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April 21, 2011superb
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews