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Book:   Ethernet: The Definitive Guide
Subject:   Ethernet: All about the Physical Layer
Date:   2007-02-12 11:10:06
From:   Duffy
Rating:  StarStarStarStarStar

To be honest the title page lead me to believe that designing and managing local area networks would actually involve more than what the book covered.
For instance, I expected something about RIP or OSPF routing, instead you get a simple pargraph or two about spanning trees and nothing of substance about SNMP. Hardly, the comprehensive book I thought it would be.


Where the book does shine is about the exhaustive detail about the various connectors, and differences in the 802.3 standards for ethernet, fast ethernet, gigabit ethernet and the subsets of cabling standards.


With that in mind, the book is very comprehensive about the ethernet standard; but the same cannot be said of the management techniques that are above the physical layer.

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  • Ethernet: All about the Physical Layer,  May 16 2007
    Rating: StarStarStarStarStar
    Submitted by Anonymous Reader   [Respond | View]

    Although aging, this book is a great description of Ethernet from the original 10Mbs thick cabling thorugh the gigabit standards. It covers copper and fiber media standards, connectors, auto-negotiation, switches, frame layout and a lot more.

    The book deals with layers 1 and 2 of the OSI reference model. It contains only passing references to things like RIP, OSPF, SNMP, IP, etc. as these items aren't Ethernet. For details on layers 3, 4, and 5 of the OSI reference model, may I recommend Douglas E. Comer's "Internetworking with TCP/IP: Principles, Protocols, and Architectures", volume 1.