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The only grip I have is that the book is thick and difficult to hold but then again it is 10 subjects in one book. I would definitely recommend it to anyone from Network engineers to those trying to set up a home network. The book is easy to read and explains things in a very clear way. The part on IP address and sub netting could use a little clarity.
I bought this book because of home networking problems. It's more like reading a simplified owner's manual. It doesn't tell me how or why networks function, worse (because it is mainly a step-by-step rehash of how to set up the network) it doesn't give me enough information to figure out why my network has become so unreliable. With this purchase, I'm giving up on the "Dummies" series. They just don't answer enough "what if" and "why" questions.
no spanning tree, trunking, etc). May be fine to set up a very small network (up to 30 computers), but nothing to take you beyond that. The book covers networking for a very small network as done by Microsoft products. lt was limited to small networks viewed through Microsoft with a token (no pun intended) nod to other platforms. I'd be surprised if I found anything I need in it. I thought I had researched the book sufficiently when I went to the Dummies website and checked the Table of Contents. The ToC topics and descriptions were what I needed but when I got the book I saw that the actual chapter text did not even cover WANs (e.g.
There is one short and dated chapter on networking with OSX. Even if you're not using Windows you can still learn a lot here but most of the information networking tools and setup is so windows-centric that it lessens the usefulness of this book for those who choose to avoid or are not using the OS from Redmond.I wish that this review could be more positive as Mr.
A proper title would be useful to avoid the purchase of a book that is so limited in scope. Lowe has a lot of information but it's usefulness is severely hampered by its failures to realize that not everyone is using windows, especially in a networking situation.
If you run Windows this is a good beginners book on Networking. There is a little more information on networking with Linux but really this book if for users of Windows.Which doesn't mean that there isn't good information here.
If you're not running Windows and even if you are you'd do better to look at the O'Reilly series of books If you run OSX, Linux or Unix forget about it.
It looks like it hasn't been updated since Panther or Jaguar.
There is zero in the way of actual instruction and examples. Waste ot time. They should omit the word "reference" from the title If you want a book that you can use as a guide while doing actual networking tasks, this is not it by a long shot. For a thick book there is little of use here. This is a general vague network discussion that gets the reader up to speed on terminology and conceptual understanding of networks.
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