TCP/IP Illustrated, Vol. 1: The Protocols (Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series)

A few reviews are critical of this book as being too academic or concept orient or out of date. There is an updated version of this book, 2011 copy. But know most of what is in this book covers the same IPv4 that is used today! . I have read TOO MANY books that use inaccurate or mismatched or generic INTERNETWORK terms. This book does an excellent job at being explicit and accurate in the use of terms and concepts, and in explaining them. Ohhhh, is that considered too academic. Well you do not want an IDIOT medical surgeon dropout doing surgery on you any more than you want an IDIOT unqualified network person working on your network. . I have met networking techs who do not know what a datagram is, or they get circuit and package switching concepts mixed up with connection and connectionless oriented concepts. Or they think IP is connection oriented, or they do not know what CSMA/CD and CSMA/CA are. I mean, Earth is round not flat. The sun is larger than the Earth. Paul Revere did NOT warn the British that the American were coming. . Ya, explicit commands or scripts or configurations are nice for a specific device or hardware or system, but ENGINEERS also need to know exactly what they are talking about and what they are doing as far as the ideas and concepts of TCP/IP. That is extremely critical!!! . You want a true ENGINEER, not a HOBBYIST, working on your network. . "What did you do?" OHHHH I connected this with that, and that with this, and configured that packet service to block this packet port and.... and I got this collision domain connected with that application... um...I had trouble getting that plug into that port, but I was able stick it in there anyway.... ummm everything should be working now... . That is why the Challenger space shuttle was lost and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill happened, because of the LACK of academic and technical and engineering appreciation. IDIOTS, or head honchos, doing something or giving orders or making judgement calls about something that they do not know enough about. . As for the down play of academics. You better know, you are not a network engineer if you do not have an actual engineering degree related to, or applicable to, the field of computer internetworking. You are just a hobbyist or at best a technician. But that is not the same as an engineer. People who down play the academic side of education or REAL engineering, do it to push the false idea that an engineering degree is not need to be an engineer. . TCP/IP is not a mystery. There is real 100% science and academics behind it. You just have to read and study it. Oh, also know that is exactly how TCP/IP started, with academics and the old ARPANET. The original ARPANET consisted of the University of Utah, University of California, and the Stanford Research Institute. If not for academics, TCP/IP would not exist at all! . Knowing what is what and what you are talking about is critical. Those who dismiss the academic side, obviously do not know what they are talking about.

This is THE BIBLE. This is the gold standard for the exposition of the TCP/IP protocol stack. Every other TCP/IP protocol book must be measured by the yardstick of this book. This is simply the most comprehensive book ever written on the TCP/IP protocol stack. It's crystal clear and utterly lucid. Stevens tome leads the reader logically, methodically and effortlessly through all of the layers of the TCP/IP protocol stack: the Link Layer (ethernet frames), IP layer, Transport Layer etc. All nuances of TCP/IP are discussed: Address Resolution Protocol (ARP), RARP, ICMP, IGMP, User Datagram Protocol, Transmission Control Protocol etc. In particular, the 135 page exposition of the transmission control protocol is a masterstroke. Application level protocols such as DNS, NFS, FTP, SMTP are discussed at length. TCP/IP Illustrated is Unix-centric. Given that the roots of TCP/IP are in Unix, every serious appreciation of the protocol requires at least a basic understanding of Unix philosophy. This book is a masterpiece of technical writing in Computer Science. Do not be mislead by the one negative review of this book on the spurious grounds that it is outdated. The TCP/IP protocol has not changed since the publication of this book in 1994. I have two copies of this book and will probably buy a third copy. I very, very highly recommend TCP/IP Illustrated Volume I.

I highly recommend this book for taking a deep-dive into computer networking.

Given the excellent price it's hard to not give this 5 stars. The book I received is exactly what it claims to be. I had to drop 1 star due to condition. It's totally usable but has someone else's name written on the side and quite a few dings in the cover. Binding is a bit loose. I would have rated it as fair not good. Overall I'm happy with it though.

I bought the '94 edition before I realized that a new edition is out that is considerably more "up-to-date", so read this review in that light. This is one of the most thorough treatments of tcp/ip you'll find. I wondered what all could be mentioned in 8 chapters devoted just to tcp, but after reading this book I see tcp in a new light. I had a "working" understanding of tcp before (and I own Tanenbaum's "Computer Networks", which covers the physical layer in great detail), but there was something in the way Stevens explained the fundamental concepts about tcp that really drove home the ideas behind the design for me. My only complaint, perhaps, is that a few of the protocols covered are quite outdated...but I'm still giving 5 stars since this book has been updated and my copy is almost 20 years old.

This is a great book for those of us who want to get better at networking. It's a great book still very useful to this day

This is an older text of the fundamentals of TCP/IP programming and networking. It is an excellent reference for the essentials of TCP/IP for professionals and students.

A very useful reference though many updates have occured since it publishing. I teach networking and so use it along with the new edition and the RFCs to see how the protocols have changed. It's often useful to see an early version of a technology that was simpler and closer to the original problem it was created to solve.

Everything went out smoothly, including shipping and handling. But why do I have to write so much do make a review!!??....................................

El libro me llego a buen tiempo no se demoro y llego bien, que era lo que esperaba para un regalo de cumpleaños el cual pude entregar a tiempo

This is simply THE BEST book about TCP/IP protocols series (although does not contain information for many of the newer protocols/RFC additions due its age). This is the IT bible. Should I say anything else? You should not buy the volume 2 and 3 unless you really know what you are doing. :) For those with the programming background like myself volume 2 is very helpful to get a better understanding how certain features normally implemented (using BSD tcp stack example).

One of the best books to really understand TCP. The content is very easy to read and flows logically from one topic to another. For a network engineer that needs to troubleshoot application performance across a network, understanding the intricacies of TCP is essential. Anyone dealing with Application Delivery Controllers (F5/A10) or WAN Acceleration (Riverbed, WAAS) will surely appreciate benefit from having this book as a reference. This book was mandatory reading in College for anyone in the network/telecommunication program.

smashing for anyone learning about Networking.