Virtual Lans: Construction, Implementation, and Management

Rating:
Summary: A good intro to networking, but not a VLANs book.
Review: The book is mis-labeled: it should be titled "Intro to Networking, with a small section on VLANs". It has 231 pages on how LANs work, but only 80 pages on VLANs, and only a few paragraphs on 802.1p/Q (the IEEE VLAN standard). The discussion of how LANs work is fairly good for an introductory level, and I recommend it for those who need an intro to LANs, but it won't tell you much more about VLANs than you couuld find out by searching on the web and reading white-papers. Also, the drawings are fairly crude and need serious polishing. Marina Smith's "Virtual Lans : A Guide to Construction, Operation, and Utilization" does a better job for VLAN knowledge, although not as good a job for basic networking knowledge.