Rating: 
Summary: Simple, Concise, especially for Beginners
Review: I am taking my first networking course and the professor recommanded this book for its simplest guide to TCP/IP socket programming.It is good because it gets beginners who are first in networking field (just like me) to be familiar with the basics in writing applications with TCP/IP sockets. However, you still have to have some essential knowledge of "C", such like pointers and struct used a lot in the sockets. It is just a introduction to socket programming, but enough for you to have a glance at it. If you want a complete reference, or you have already had experience in socket programming, this book may not suit for you. After all, it is for novice. I recommanded Stevens's "UNIX Network Programming" if you want a further study. I dare to say it is the bible book in network programming.
Rating: 
Summary: Nice Introduction to Socket Programming
Review: The other reviewers have it right: the book is a nice introduction to socket programming. All of the 'C' socket functions are there. Topics such as signals and multithreading are covered. The book is succinct but not simplistic.
Unix is assumed as the OS. Windows programmers will have to get the code from the authors' book site. In some cases there is no equivalent code.
But the authors are right. This book merely scratches the surface in terms of programming for the network.
Rating:
Summary: Every computer science book should be so clear
Review: The Pocket Guide to TCP/IP Sockets is a wonderful, hands-on introduction to socket programming. It's small, light, and inexpensive. Perfect!!! I wish that all computer science books were as well-presented and affordable as this one. Definitely a keeper. I know people who refuse even to loan their copy to friends :)
Rating:
Summary: A Unix socket book worth the money and time!
Review: The reviews by the Amazon reviewers "Rebecca L Kuri" and "Erick & Janet Wagner" accurately describe my thoughts on "TCP/IP Sockets in C:..". I too waded through the "W.R. Stevens" books, "Internetworking with TCP/IP" Volumes I thru III, and a few other Unix socket books but did not find one that provided as much information in as short a time as this book. "Bob Tribit's" negative review of this book is useful to people already familiar with network programming. He provides good reasoning on using the more thorough books of "W.R. Stevens", which are very useful in their context. If you plan to do Windows socket programming you still might want to pick this book up as an initial reference, but the Winsock2 API's and data structures are different. The Winsock APIs still have the underlying data requirements for the standard IP protocols, which is why this might still provide useful information.
Rating:
Summary: A Unix socket book worth the money and time!
Review: The reviews by the Amazon reviewers "Rebecca L Kuri" and "Erick & Janet Wagner" accurately describe my thoughts on "TCP/IP Sockets in C:..". I too waded through the "W.R. Stevens" books, "Internetworking with TCP/IP" Volumes I thru III, and a few other Unix socket books but did not find one that provided as much information in as short a time as this book. "Bob Tribit's" negative review of this book is useful to people already familiar with network programming. He provides good reasoning on using the more thorough books of "W.R. Stevens", which are very useful in their context. If you plan to do Windows socket programming you still might want to pick this book up as an initial reference, but the Winsock2 API's and data structures are different. The Winsock APIs still have the underlying data requirements for the standard IP protocols, which is why this might still provide useful information.
Rating:
Summary: A Unix socket book worth the money and time!
Review: The reviews by the Amazon reviewers "Rebecca L Kuri" and "Erick & Janet Wagner" accurately describe my thoughts on "TCP/IP Sockets in C:..". I too waded through the "W.R. Stevens" books, "Internetworking with TCP/IP" Volumes I thru III, and a few other Unix socket books but did not find one that provided as much information in as short a time as this book. "Bob Tribit's" negative review of this book is useful to people already familiar with network programming. He provides good reasoning on using the more thorough books of "W.R. Stevens", which are very useful in their context. If you plan to do Windows socket programming you still might want to pick this book up as an initial reference, but the Winsock2 API's and data structures are different. The Winsock APIs still have the underlying data requirements for the standard IP protocols, which is why this might still provide useful information.
Rating:
Summary: Perfect way to get a grip on sockets!
Review: This book is awesome. I've been writing tcp/ip sockets code for years and I've used all the standard reference books (Esp. the Stevens books) and they're great. Let me tell you, though, that I wish I had this book when I got started with TCP/IP programming. It's clear, it goes into sufficient detail to get you to understand what's going on, but not so much that you get lost. I read in two pages of this book something that none of the other books showed, the 'pre-forking' server model which things like Apache use. None of my other books explain how this works, this does, clearly and concisely. Even though I own all the standards (TCP/IP Illustrated volumes 1, 2 and 3, and both editions of Unix Network Programming by Stevens) when I got a chance to thumb through this book (and it's sister book "TCP/IP sockets in java") I knew immediately I would be buying them. Excellent. Just Excellent.
Rating:
Summary: Perfect way to get a grip on sockets!
Review: This book is awesome. I've been writing tcp/ip sockets code for years and I've used all the standard reference books (Esp. the Stevens books) and they're great. Let me tell you, though, that I wish I had this book when I got started with TCP/IP programming. It's clear, it goes into sufficient detail to get you to understand what's going on, but not so much that you get lost. I read in two pages of this book something that none of the other books showed, the 'pre-forking' server model which things like Apache use. None of my other books explain how this works, this does, clearly and concisely. Even though I own all the standards (TCP/IP Illustrated volumes 1, 2 and 3, and both editions of Unix Network Programming by Stevens) when I got a chance to thumb through this book (and it's sister book "TCP/IP sockets in java") I knew immediately I would be buying them. Excellent. Just Excellent.
Rating: 
Summary: No, no, no. Bad, book, bad.
Review: This book is woefully incomplete. The real world examples aren't, and as for being a practical guide for programmers it isn't. It is missing critical topics such as what is Nagle's algorithm (i.e. TCP_NODELAY) and when to use it. Helpful resolver functions such as sethostent() and endhostent() are not discussed. It includes none of the lessons learned by the apache server project (i.e. ways to handle thundering herd (accept() wakeups)). This is a great book to make a programmer incredibly dangerous at network programming, but isn't complete enough to make them understand why if they change the examples quirky things start to happen. Network socket programming isn't something that can be done with a glass of lemonade and a weekend with this book. Get the Steven's books, and then get Effective TCP/IP Programming which quickly tells you how to polish what you have created to something resembling a predictable "working" network application.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Basic TCP/IP Programming book
Review: This book was recommended to me for one of my courses and I was very skeptical seeing the size. But after reading the book, I was extremely impressed. If you are just into network programming, then this book teaches most of the basics needed to advance more deeply. The explanations are very good and all the code written in the book work :) If you are already familiar with the basics of TCP / IP, then you can finish this book in about a day or two. I highly recommend this book for every network programming beginner. Please Note: This book is not a guide to C programming and you should be familiar with basic C data structures and pointers for understanding some of the code logic.
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