The Internet and Its Protocols : A Comparative Approach (Morgan Kaufmann Series in Networking)

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Summary: The Internet and Its Protocols
Review: This is a modern and attractive title for the classical topic of TCP/IP computer networks. Students and professionals that wish to gain, expand and update their knowledge in the Internet protocols will find this book a useful reference. It is well written, achieves clarity at the expense of avoiding detail, provides plenty of good figures, does a superb job explaining why protocols were designed the way they are and dedicates a significant part of the book to introduce some of the latest protocols developed by the IETF that will or are already shaping the new Internet.

The book follows the classical bottom up layering approach. Yet it distinguishes itself from the rest by creating whole chapters on the latest internet protocol developments that are briefly treated in others. For example, an early chapter is devoted to IP multicast, which describes how multicast groups are formed and how traffic is delivered to them. The being reasons of IPv6 and its main features are described in a standalone chapter. Routing fundamentals and protocols are described extensively and valuable explanations on how routing protocols can be used for traffic engineering are given. Differentiated and Integrated Services are briefly presented as a manner to deliver specific quality of service levels. The chapter on internet transport protocols is concise and clear and describes briefly the new developments on SCTP and UDP Lite but unexpectedly the exposition on TCP, the most important of all of them, lacks of depth and descriptions of its latest important developments. One of the best and most extensive parts of this book are the four chapters dedicated to IP traffic engineering, in which MPLS and GMPLS form the core of it. They are competently and fully described from their fundamentals to how they are applied for traffic engineering purposes. The last part of the book contains brief but novel introductions of fast growing applications such as VPNs, mobile IP and VoIP among others. It is worth of note the abundant application notes of how MPLS can be used in conjunction with applications such as header compression, VoMPLS and MPLS VPNs. In summary, this is well written book that not only treats the traditional topics of TCP/IP network but it also introduces some of the most recent advances developed by the Internet community.