Rating: 
Summary: The RFCs are clearer
Review: Not so clearly written (or typeset for that matter). It's also somewhat out-of-date ('96).I refer to it periodically, but find myself reading the RFC documents instead. Stallings misdescribes the ipNetToMedia table(p. 130, 137). He doesn't mention that it's equivalent to the ARP cache.
Rating:
Summary: Not That Happy
Review: Ten years ago I thought that William Stallings was a good author. However, technical writing has moved forward since then or at least I have read a lot more technical books, and when given the choice of a Stallings book or a book by another author, I would check out the other author first. Mr Stallings is something of an interpreter of incomprehensible standards documents, a high priest of hi-tech. Unfortunately his style is not very accessible, as though he is keen to maintain a certain element of mystique and maintain an intellectual distance from the unititiated. For me, he is on the wrong side of the balance between technical stringency and accessibility. For anyone who wants to use SNMP rather create SNMP software, it helps to break off from discussions of entities, instances, objects, vectors and the finers point of Abstract Syntax Notation to give some meaningful concrete examples with words like WAN link, packet, error etc. Mr Stallings is much more comfortable with the abstact than I am as befits a man who reads IEEE specifications but he needs to remember that he is preaching to more practical simple-minded types who like to talk about "relatively" tangible and familiar things. I think the guys who rate this book highly are programmers who already knew about SNMP before buying the book and who use the book as a reference. As a network admin who wants to use SNMP to manage my network, I can say that I would buy this book with my company's money but not mine.
Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive but not Very Well Structured
Review: The book "Snmp, Snmpv2, Snmpv3 and Rmon 1 and 2" describes network management with the SNMP protocol. The first part introduces the reader to network management fundamentals and the rest of the book deals with SNMP and RMON. It covers the history of SNMP, the standard MIB, the management information, the protocols and the security models (v3). The book is quite comprehensive and covers all relevant aspects of SNMP (and then some). The chapters are ordered chronologically, the text can thus be read from front to back, starting with the simple assumptions and basic operations of v1, leading to the more complex issues of the v3 security model. There are quite some problematic aspects to this text. I had a hard time reading it, as some of the concepts are not explained very well and because of a lack of a good overview of SNMP, its protocols and the information model. Some simple concepts are illustrated and described well but in a repetitive manner, and some of the more advanced features of SNMP are not covered well, or are hidden somewhere within a generic section, e.g. table augments. The author also has the tendency to dig into related topics throughout the book, which makes it hard to get the essential information on SNMP while reading the book. It would have probably been better to collect these sections and chapters at the end of the book, e.g. Measurements, Polling Frequencies, all the chapter's appendices. Some of the chapters are really not needed for a book like this. E.g. the whole chapter on the cryptographic algorithms in SNMPv3. It is very hard to explain cryptography in 20 pages and there are a lot of marvelous books on the subject. The organization of the book seems to follow the RFCs a little bit too closely. Overall, this text is a comprehensive description of SNMP, but the structure and the writing style make it quite hard to read.
Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive but not Very Well Structured
Review: The book "Snmp, Snmpv2, Snmpv3 and Rmon 1 and 2" describes network management with the SNMP protocol. The first part introduces the reader to network management fundamentals and the rest of the book deals with SNMP and RMON. It covers the history of SNMP, the standard MIB, the management information, the protocols and the security models (v3). The book is quite comprehensive and covers all relevant aspects of SNMP (and then some). The chapters are ordered chronologically, the text can thus be read from front to back, starting with the simple assumptions and basic operations of v1, leading to the more complex issues of the v3 security model. There are quite some problematic aspects to this text. I had a hard time reading it, as some of the concepts are not explained very well and because of a lack of a good overview of SNMP, its protocols and the information model. Some simple concepts are illustrated and described well but in a repetitive manner, and some of the more advanced features of SNMP are not covered well, or are hidden somewhere within a generic section, e.g. table augments. The author also has the tendency to dig into related topics throughout the book, which makes it hard to get the essential information on SNMP while reading the book. It would have probably been better to collect these sections and chapters at the end of the book, e.g. Measurements, Polling Frequencies, all the chapter's appendices. Some of the chapters are really not needed for a book like this. E.g. the whole chapter on the cryptographic algorithms in SNMPv3. It is very hard to explain cryptography in 20 pages and there are a lot of marvelous books on the subject. The organization of the book seems to follow the RFCs a little bit too closely. Overall, this text is a comprehensive description of SNMP, but the structure and the writing style make it quite hard to read.
Rating: 
Summary: The SNMP part is okay, but RMON area lacks detail
Review: The sections on SNMP are helpful, but if your looking for RMON info you should pass on this book. The author basically copies the RFC's verbatim and offers no more insight than the descriptions found in the Mibs themselves.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent reference on SNMP
Review: The third edition of this book by Stallings updates his excellent reference book to cover SNMPv3 and RMON 2. I am an owner of the first edition which also covered CMIP, but was dropped in the second edition. I bought this book to get the SNMPv3 material. As with all of this books, he does an excellent job of explaining the subject matter and taking the standard RFCs and providing useful, readable material. As far as changes since the second edition, RMON 2 gets a chapter of its own. The SNMPv3 material covers four chapters. This book is what I use in my job for SNMP development. I highly recommend it - both as a reference and for learning the details of SNMP.
Rating:
Summary: Good for developpers - bad for systems administrators
Review: This book is deep down description of all the OIDs and structure of SNMP.
If you want to know how the messages get through (SNMP get and other commands) in a developer's point of view, and you want a full dump of all the leafs and OIDs in the MIB structure, then this book is for you.
If you are a systems administrator looking for a practical way to understand how to use SNMP to manage your network devices, then look elsewhere (Essential SNMP, for instance).
Rating:
Summary: Good for developpers - bad for systems administrators
Review: This is the best book I found on SNMP. I found Essential SNMP to be lacking in detail and the descriptions in Managing Internetworks with SNMP were not so clear. So far it has been able to answer every question I have had regarding SNMP.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: This is the best book I found on SNMP. I found Essential SNMP to be lacking in detail and the descriptions in Managing Internetworks with SNMP were not so clear. So far it has been able to answer every question I have had regarding SNMP.
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