Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach (4th Edition)

1. 
   Digital Puer permalink

   September 2, 2010

   Review by Digital Puer for Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach (4th Edition)
   Rating:
   I’m a graduate student in Comp Sci, and I recently had the opportunity to take a networking class again just to refresh my basic knowledge (my dissertation topic isn’t related to networks). It was a pleasant surprise for me that the class utilised this textbook. I have been at the university level in CS for 8+ years (grad + undergrad), and this book is *by far* the best introductory computer science textbook I have ever read in any CS subject.The book is very well-written and extremely interesting to read. I was never bored in any chapter. Kurose and Ross are knowledgable experts in their field, and their exposition of the material is fantastic. Unlike Tanenbaum’s book, they start at the application layer and move down. IMHO, this is a far better pedagogical strategy, because young students these days already have an excellent layer-5 understanding thanks to daily interaction with HTTP, IM, P2P file sharing, etc. If I remember correctly from my undergrad days, my own experience in a bottom-up approach, starting at the physical layer, really put me to sleep and put me off from networking. That’s a shame, because networking is a really exciting field.The best parts of the book are the breadth, thorough use of real-world topics, and the illustrations. In fact, the diagrams and illustrations are just plain great. Most technical writers often rely too much on the written word. Here, the authors augment almost every pair of pages with an illustration; this is simply remarkable. The explanations of fundamental topics (such as packet-switching, DNS, TCP congestion control, IP routing, and ethernet) are *extremely* clear. More advanced topics are very up-to-date, covering cutting-edge subjects such as P2P, CDNs, security, NATs, 802.11, RTP, etc. I have not found a better introductory explanation of CDNs anywhere else. Although networking does have a lot of math in various areas, this introductory book does not get too much in detail in mathematical discourse, making this book very readable. That’s a fine approach in my opinion, as a deep mathematical analysis of various topics is best left for grad school or a professional job.The authors’ academic background really shows. Every topic is filled with citations/references to other work. This is great, because this book is just an introductory book with wide breadth but is otherwise lacking in significant depth. The interested reader (future grad student or network engineer?) can easily follow up on any topic he/she likes thanks to the exhaustive list of references.As if all of that were not enough, there is an accompanying website that has interactive Java applets demonstrating various topics as well as a set of Powerpoint slides for download. Furthermore, I enjoyed the interchapter dialogues with various famous researchers in the field.All in all, this is an outstanding book for the undergrad level, and I expect this would be a great book for professionals who want to have a firm grasp on networking fundamentals. I wish all my undergrad books were written as well as this one.

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2. 
   PigRoasterDad permalink

   September 2, 2010

   Review by PigRoasterDad for Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach (4th Edition)
   Rating:
   Our course, Networking and Data Communications, was assigned to me in the eleventh hour. Though I have been teaching Computer Science for 22 years I had not taught this course before. I chose this book because it seemed to be well written and had good support materials but, as we all know, there is no guarantee that the students will agree. The course is over now and I just received the student evaluations of me, the text and the course. They were much better than I hoped for and I give the bulk of the credit to this textbook. Here are the three written comments from students regarding the book “Book was good, approach was beneficial.” “The book for this course [Kurose,2000] was excellent. I recommend keeping it.” “The book was very useful, but the website could use some work.”Students are also asked to rate the book on a scale from 1 (difficult to understand) to 5 (Clear and easy to read). The book was rated as follows by the 22 students in the class: 8 fives, 13 fours, 1 three, 1 two and no ones. As an instructor, I found the book to be well written and well edited. Rarely did I find errors in the text and most of those that I did find were typographical errors. I found the web site to be especially useful. The discussions by other readers pointed out things to watch out for and gave me an easy way to make general preparations well in advance. I had my students do the first three lab assignments. They especially liked the two application layer assignments and had a good bit of trouble with the transport layer assignment. I found the supplied code to be well organized and the parts that were left out for the students to complete challenged them (and me) in the right directions. The approach of focusing on Internet networking was an excellent choice for an introduction to networking. The choice to start at the application layer and move down to the physical layer is natural and understandable. It drives home the whole idea of layered architectures well and is a great example of the power of top-down approaches.I will follow the advice of the student that recommends we keep this text when I teach the course next year.As any reader of this might guess, I highly recommend this text and ancillary materials for an introductory course in networking. I congratulate the authors and all that helped them on this project for the fine work they did.

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3. 
   Anonymous permalink

   September 2, 2010

   Review by for Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach (4th Edition)
   Rating:
   I never read a book that was more clear then this one. Also while the book is rather theoretical, it contains so much real case studies and interesting facts that the reader keeps his motivation from the start to the end of the book. Here is a comparison with Tannenbaum ‘s famous book on computer networking.-Both books go deep and give fairly rigorous explantion without too much mathematics. Only some basic math and basic probablility is required like binomial distributions etc …(remark however these books do not delve into the details of mathematical queueing models etc …)
   -This book is very up-to-date with the latest internet technologies like point-to-point file sharing, streaming and multimedia. Tannnenbaum does not contain the latest developments in these fields.
   -The physical layer is explained in more details in Tannenbaum.
   Other layers are explained with the same level of details in both books.
   -This book reads better then Tannenbaum without sacrifying rigour. It contains also much more real-life case-studies.
   -The concepts in this book are explained in a much clearer way then Tannenbaum. I perceived Tannenbaum as sometimes confusing. The authors of this book have so good didactic skills that they could explain complex networking topics to chimpansees….Conclusion : this is the only book I know in computer networks that goes deep enough and explains the concepts in a clear way…If you are looking for the best book on computer networking, stop looking : here it is !!!.

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4. 
   Michael Yasumoto permalink

   September 2, 2010

   Review by Michael Yasumoto for Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach (4th Edition)
   Rating:
   This review compares the following four books:
   
   Computer Networks by Peterson and Davie (P & D)
   
   Computer Networks by Tanenbaum
   
   Computer Networks by Comer / Internetworking with TCP/IP
   
   Computer Networking by Kurose and Ross (K & R)

   By far the best book in the list is “Computer Networking” by Kurose and Ross. This book covers all of the essential material that is in the other books but manages to do so in a relevant and entertaining way. This book is very up to date as seen by the release of the 5th Ed when the 4th Ed is barely two years old. There are lots of practical exercises using wireshark and the companion website is actually useful and relevant. The attitude of this book with regard to teaching networking concepts could be summed up as “try it out and see for yourself”. One interesting thing to note is that the socket programming example are all in Java.

   Next up is the Peterson and Davie book which covers everything that Kurose and Ross discuss but is slightly more mathematical in how it goes about things. There are a lot more numerical examples and defining of formulas in this book which is fine by me and in no way detracts from the book. Also the socket programming examples are in C which is a little more traditional. The points where this text loses ground to K & R is that it doesn’t have the practical application exercises that K & R has and it also doesn’t extend the basic networking theory that is covered to modern protocols like K & R.

   The two Comer books come next. Comer’s “Computer Networks” book is probably the most introductory book out of this whole list and is more of a survey of networking topics that doesn’t cover anything in any real depth. Still, this is an excellent book in that it is a quick clear read that is very lucid in its explanations and you can’t help feeling that you understand everything that is covered in the book. Comer’s TCP/IP book is the equivalent of the other authors’ computer network books and in that respect it is pretty average. It covers all of the relevant material and in a manner which is more than readable but that is all. There is nothing exceptional about the book which stands out from the rest.

   Last comes Tanenbaum’s book from the author who is probably most famous for his OS books. This is probably the most technical and detailed of the books with lots of sample C code belying is experience with operating systems and their network stack code. The weak point of this book is that all of the code and technical minutia might prevent the reader from seeing the forest for the trees. Unless you are trying to learn how to program your own network stack for a Unix/Linux system, then I would get either the K & R book or the P & D book to learn networking for the first time. This book would best be served as a reference in which case the technical nature of the book becomes a benefit rather than detracting from the text.

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5. 
   Aaron Rutledge permalink

   September 2, 2010

   Review by Aaron Rutledge for Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach (4th Edition)
   Rating:
   “Computer Networking” by Kurose and Ross is an excellent introduction to the topic of computer networking as it relates to the largest and arguably most important network of them all: the internet. As stated in the title, the authors take a top-down approach that, in my opinion, is very well suited to CS or SE majors who are typically already familiar with aspects of the application and transport layers, but who often have had little or no training (or interest) at the physical layer. In this way Kurose’s text distinguishes itself from other popular texts such as those by Stallings (“Data and Computer Communications”) or Tanenbaum (“Computer Networks”).

   There are a total of nine chapters, the first of which paints the big picture and lays out the plan for the book. The book presents a analysis of each layer of the 5-layer TCP/IP model. The decision to use the TCP/IP model over the OSI model is appropriate considering the authors’ intentions of focusing on the internet. To accomplish their goal the authors next provide chapters on the application, transport, network and data-link layers respectively. The coverage of the application and transport layers are where the book seperates itself from both Tanenbaum and (especially) Stallings. In addition to providing the theory Kurose and Ross also inject practical demonstrations such as introducing the reader to socket programming in Java. The coverage of the network and datalink layers is somewhat more standard, but still very good and complete. Following these are chapters on wireless and mobile networks, multi-media networking, network security, and a small chapter on network management. Coverage of the physical layer is spread throughout all of the chapters in the book and presented on a “need-to-know” basis. Each chapter presents ample details about the protocols, technologies, algorithms and standards that are used by each layer as it relates to the internet. All of these chapters are quite long (between 70-120 pages) which may give readers the impression that the text drags on. It would be wise for readers to treat the major sub-headings in each chapter as single entities, rather than attempting to plow through each chapter in a single sitting.

   The style of the writing would be best described as clear and accessible. The authors make use of analogy and repetition to drive home the content, particularly in the first three chapters. Students who are new to the subject and have not had much experience thinking about things such as protocols and algorithms will likely appreciate this approach.

   Like any book, this book will be useful only to a subset of people who want to study computer networks. I think this book provides the best introduction for CS/SE students who have not had much exposure to network theory and are looking for a practical introduction to the subject. For CS/SE students who feel they want a more formal, terse, and dense introduction to the subject, they should try Tanenbaum’s “Computer Networks” instead. Be aware that while Tanenbaum does provide more complete coverage he also assumes more “maturity” from the reader. Kurose can thus be thought of as a “gentle” verion of Tanenbaum’s book. For EE/CE majors I would recommend Stallings or Tanenbaum over Kurose. Although Kurose does cover topics such as physical media and signaling, his treatment is cursory and assumes that the reader is not particularly interested in the fine theoretical details. Stallings, in contradistinction to Kurose, assumes the reader is not particularly interested in the transport and application layers and spends many pages covering the fine details of the physical theory. Stallings coverage is also much more broad than Kurose’s, as he does not give particular preference to the internet, an approach that will probably just bore CS/SE students. Tanenbaum provides the most balanced and uniform coverage of the three books, and can be used successfully and fruitfully by anyone who has a solid background in computer science or computer engineering.

   A word needs to be said about the problem sets at the end of each chapter. Some of the problems can be difficult to solve unless you have really mastered the material in the chapter. There are not tons of examples given within the text itself. Thus, it is fair to say that the authors implicitly assume a certain amount of mathematical maturity. You must be fairly comfortable thinking algebraically, and with calculating values and solving basic equations. CS and SE students should not have any problems here. There is very little advanced algebra, no trigonometry, and no calculus. While the lack of examples may frustrate some readers, compared to both Tanenbaum and Stallings, Kurose’s problem sets are very straight-forward and elementary.

   In conclusion, Kurose and Ross provide an excellent introduction to networking and the internet for CS/SE majors or anyone who is at least somewhat computer saavy. Highly recommended overall.

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