Sams Teach Yourself Networking in 24 Hours (3rd Edition) (ISBN 0672326086)

Amazon.com Review:
You can't go too far in technology these days without at least a casual understanding of data communications over local and wide-area networks (LANs and WANs). Sams Teach Yourself Networking in 24 Hours will clue you in on the seven-layer Open Systems Interconnect (OSI) networking abstraction and other key facts and concepts having to do with communication among computers. This is the sort of book you sit down and read, perhaps doodling some sketches to the side, rather than use as a guide for experiments performed on a live computer. As such, it's a good starting point as you prepare for a general networking exam, such as Microsoft's Networking Essentials exam. Some readers may find author Matt Hayden's approach a bit scattershot. He introduces, for example, some of the details of Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) and IP subnetting before he explains network topologies. He also touches on technologies such as hard-drive storage, which are not at all central to networking. But despite the padding and the sometimes-strange organizational decisions, Hayden has done a fine job of communicating the critical facts and concepts about networking in an implementation-independent way. Though he writes about the relative merits of networks built with NetWare, Windows, Unix, and Linux, he doesn't muddy the water with click-this, choose-that instructions. --David Wall Topics covered: The essentials of computer networking, explained for people who have never studied the subject before. Design and implementation issues are treated generically, and the author makes high-level comparisons among NetWare, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Unix, and Linux.

Better off with any other book on the subject!:
I found this book to be full of errors and a total waste of my time. If you are a TOTAL beginner and don't have a clue maybe it would be ok. But it lacks depth, is error prone, and repeats. You would be much better off reading the Networking Essentials Study guide ISBN #0764531778 - yea - I know it cost more but you get what you pay for, unless you buy this book - then it is a waste of all your money. Take it from me I passed the Networking Essential's exam and am a MCP, better of with other books.

Gets you started:
Networking can be a frustrating experience. There used to be lots of grungy details to deal with, and all the debugging would be done on a command line. No GUIs to guide you. But here the authors hope to improve matters. Naturally, the network described in most of the book is TCP/IP, better known as the Internet. There are also brief descriptions of ATM, Token Ring, FDDI, IPX and Net BIOS. It's probably fair to say that for most readers, you won't encounter these networks anytime soon. The Internet is where most of the network buildout is happening. For the Internet itself, they don't go down to the level of detail about the various fields in a packet header. Just to give you an idea of the degree of foreknowledge you need for this book. At the operating system level, they give a balanced coverage of unix/linux networking and its counterpart under Microsoft. For diagnosis and security, there is a general exposition of good practices. The authors refrain from delving into using tools like Snort or Ethereal as part of your Intrusion Detection Systems. In fact, they don't even use the latter term (or IDS). The book is worthy as a nice first book on networking. Gets you started.

Great for a beginner:
I was a person who knew something about PCs, but knew nothing about networks and I felt this book was very informative. When you are done, you will at least know what the jargon means and a little bit about the hardware and software associated with networks. If you are a beginner, this is the book for you. If you are already a network administrator, it is probably not for you.

Tries to teach everything but doesn't teach much:
This book is supposed to teach you network design and admin, amongst other things including basic computer knowledge, in just 24 hours. If that is possible, all those network designers and administrators out there will be out of a job very soon. The only saving grace is that a bit of everything pertinent to networking is covered. For me, that's still insufficient reason to read the book.

Sams Teach Yourself Networking in 24 Hours, Third Edition:
Sams Teach Yourself Networking in 24 Hours, Third Edition is very informative and very well designed to get a begginer up to speed with the networking principles.