Free Introduction to Networking Book

prostoalex writes "Eugene Blanchard made his Introduction to Data Communications (also known as Introduction to Networking) available for free. The book covers a broad variety of topics such as RS-232, Ethernet, RF, TCP/IP and many other topics in its 63 chapters. This is a valuable reference and read for those just starting to understand networking and data communications as well as seasoned professionals in the field."

Gift horse

[rednip]

I'd hate to look a gift horse in the mouth, but my first look at a page was this grafic of the parts of a PC [techbooksforfree.com] which is (obviously) out of date. It doens't even include an optical drive, or a mouse for that matter.

Re:Gift horse

[rednip]

Was that supposed to be funny, or are you really that stupid?

You my good AC 'sir', are a thin skinned ass. Uh, the entire appendix should be labeled 'historical' and clearly hasn't been updated in at least 5 years. I applaud the author for making this tome available, but I'd probably be better as a good seed for a wiki.

Irrelevant

[brunes69]

That has nothing at all to do with the subject matter the book is about. The basic concepts that these intro to data comm. textbooks cover have not changed since the 60's.

I wish this had been availlable 4 years ago while I was still in University, it would have saved me $70.

Re:Gift horse

[mooingyak]

There's also an appendix listing well known ports. I noticed Port 22 is listed as "unassigned", which I believe has been used for SSH for quite a while.

Re:Gift horse

[__aaclcg7560]

Looks like a Socket 7 motherboard with VESA slots, about mid-1990s.

If you want screwed motherboard graphics, check the insides of a PC case in Half-Life 2. The motheboard is installed backwards. Don't know if that's a feature or a bug. :)

Damn.....

[kaens]

Should've just linked to the parent site like this
Cause that is one awesome site.

Re:Damn.....

[kaens]

Should've previewed. http://www.techbooksforfree.com/ [techbooksforfree.com]

Re:Damn.....

[ninejaguar]

Awesome!

= 9J =

Is this a joke?

[wonkamaster]

I *quickly* flipped through the contents and found the content to be way off. My favorite part is 42g (EGRP):

"EGRP was created to solve many of the problems with RIP and has become the default routing protocol across the Internet."

First of all, there is no protocol EGRP. If there were such a thing as a default Internet routing protocol I'd say it was BGP. Not to mention that there is no routing protocol called EGRP.

...it uses up to 5 metrics (conditions) to determine the best route:

* Bandwidth
* Hop Count (Delay) - maximum of 255
* Maximum Packet size
* Reliability
* Traffic (Load)

Oh he means EIGRP, the Cisco proprietary protocol. Not only is it not an exterior routing protocol (a requirement to handle Internet routing) it's not supported by anything other than Cisco routers! And most Cisco-only shops don't use it because it's distance vector (even if enhanced)!!!

And for what it's worth, EIGRP doesn't use hop count or max packet size in its metric calculation to determine the best route. Per Cisco [cisco.com], It uses bandwidth, load, delay and reliability in its calculation.

My advice, you're better off staying away from this book. You can learn accurate information elsewhere, even if you have to pay for it.

Re:Is this a joke?

[topham]

It -used- to be a requirement to use Cisco equipment, and a cursory look around the net turns up usage of ERP/EIRP/EIGRP as meaning the same thing. As well as the fact it seems to be a reference to the protocol BGP/BGRP replaced.

Re:Is this a joke?

[wonkamaster]

Based on your profile you don't seem to be a troll, so I'm going on the assumption that you're not overly familiar with networking and it's history.

EIGRP is a proprietary protocol created by Cisco to get around the limitations of IGRP. IGRP was another proprietary protocol (recently removed from newer Cisco software) that was created to overcome the scalability limitations of RIP. So RIP was first (also unique in that the RFC describing it came years after it was implemented by vendors). IGRP was created

Overall Impact

[cyberkeyz]

You know, I would think that most of the Internet Populiist would be open to any sort of free info. In the end, individuals like myselph greatly appriciate all the documintation that we could get our gruby little hands on. Information should be free to an extent, right? Well that just leads us into a much greater subject that I'm not going to get into right now for obvious reasons. :)

Other free network book

[Oscaro]

This one [ibm.com] is also very very good, and free.

Sweet!

[cuteseal]

Now tell me why I bought a $59.99 textbook for my Business Data Communications class again? :/