PPP Design and Debugging

Rating:
Summary: PPP explained and more..
Review: During my first job right out of grad school, I needed to debug PPP a lot on cisco routers and it gave me a good understanding of the subject.

Cisco's web site has enough info on debuggin PPP and this books goes in conjuction with it along with the relevant RFCs. I didnt find any other book addressing the debugging issues addressed in this book.

This book truly shows what an elegant protocol PPP is.

James is also an active contributor on the PPP news group and could be great help if you have questions!

Rating:
Summary: for developers and modifiers: as good as it gets
Review: I agree with all the previous reviewers:alex levin, feisal siddiqi, frank kastenholz, patrick klos, maguire. Additionaly I value the section with samples of ppp traces with comments. This is a book written by a developer with the ability to generalize and present his opinion, which is not allways affirmative of the RFC.

Rating:
Summary: Good book to start for PPP-debug-novice
Review: I need to debug PPP a lot on cisco routers and it gave me a good understanding of the subject. cisco web site has enough info on debuggin PPP and this books goes in conjuction with it along with the relevant RFCs. I didnt find any other book addressing the debugging issues addressed in this book. I'm looking forward to a/the sequel!

Rating:
Summary: The book to read if you are writing or modifying a PPP
Review: If you are trying to understand the details of PPP or are trying to improve the performance of a PPP implementation, this is _the_ book to read. Two pages alone saved weeks of time.

Rating:
Summary: The PPP Bible
Review: PPP Design and Debugging has been hailed by our reviewers as the book that will become the PPP Bible. Reviewers have also raved about the coverage of debugging issues - how to isolate and solve connection problems.

Rating:
Summary: right on the mark
Review: The author motivates the design of the PPP protocol extremely well, and provides an intelligible roadmap to the RFCs and the vendor-specific "standards". Beyond that, he carefully points out shortcomings and misfeatures in various pieces of the PPP design and in various common PPP implementations, making the book far more useful and interesting than a "mere" reference on the subject would have been. (Not surprisingly, the shortcomings tend to exist in the proprietary PPP variants and implementations rather than in the open-standard and open-source ones...)

If your only reason for picking up the book is because you want to understand the difference between SLIP and PPP, you'll get more than you bargained for. But if you want or need to understand how PPP works, I can't imagine a better book than this one. The author guides the reader through the highly technical subject matter with satisfying authority. His delivery is strengthened by the exceptional editing and presentation of the publishers.

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Summary: Essential background and overview
Review: This book provides essential background and overview for PPP. It provides the glue that is needed to bring together all of the many RFCs and standards that comprise PPP. I recently started working on developing a PPP implementation. I'd been "out" of PPP for about a year and spending a few hours reading this book brought me up to date, saving days of reading and cross-checking RFCs, trying to figure out what is and is not relevant.

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Summary: Audience for PPP Design and Debugging
Review: This book was written for the system designer, network administrator, or technical support specialist who needs to understand PPP at a byte-by-byte level. It covers the line coding techniques, the negotiation model, and the specific protocols that it supports. This book does not cover the configuration or use of any particular implementation in much detail -- there are already a number of books which do this. Instead, it sorts through the sometimes conflicting and often confusing array of standards which comprise PPP and ties them together in a coherent whole. If you are designing a PPP implementation, debugging a link using a protocol analyzer, or are curious about how an important part of the Internet works, then this book is for you.

Rating:
Summary: good, but not for real life troubleshooting
Review: This is a good book for understanding ppp and all the relevant things. Howerver, if you are looking for troubleshooting PPP connections, find something else.