The Complete Network Upgrade & Maintenance Guide

Rating:
Summary: As networking introduction
Review: Excellent coverage of all aspect of networking but lots of error especially in the tcp/ip subnetting section. This book made a great introduction to the world of networking.

Rating:
Summary: Not worth the price tag
Review: Take Chris Brenton's "Multiprotocol Network Design and Troubleshooting" book, add some information on Token Ring, AppleShare, Banyan, LANtastic as well as a number of other dead technologies, slap Mark Minasi's name on the cover and increase the price by $15 and what do you get? "The Complete Network Upgrade & Maintenance Guide". I kid you not, I compared these two books page by page and the text on all of the current technologies is identical word for word. Sybex burned me on this book but never again. It makes me wonder if all the current Minasi books are thrown together the same way.

Rating:
Summary: Global coverage
Review: The book covers about every networking related topic with enough theoretical and practicle depth to really understand what's going on.

Some topics described are a little outdated but before a person can understand what's going on with today standards it should understand previous technologies.

It's the only book i know that covers about every protocol used for the various OSI layers (from application standard to the cabling part) without getting too technical on the bit's and bytes level.

I don't really understand why they choose the title "The Complete Network Upgrade & Maintenance Guide" since the book is more a global networking tutorial.

A good, huge book i recommend to everybody that wants to learn about all concepts used with LAN/WAN (inter)networking.