ISBN0201776316

A source book for developers, and everyone interested in study the IP protocol and sorrounding protocols: a Packet Switching delivery service.

Interesting Programming topics:

* Jump Table (Figure 3.11, page 71) by which network device specific details are isolated from the Network Layer.

* Relationship between Network Packet Structures (in memory) and the Source code that manipulate them as in page 90-91: the Ethernet frame structure.

Interesting Protocol internal topics:

* Device driver modular diagrams as in page 101: Ethernet device driver.

* IP Packets with Option processing and how fragmentation is worked out (pages 210-216)

* The major and most important self-question and function of IP routers: "To Forward or Not To Foward" an IP Packet. A detail description of final destination and other decision topics: routing, fragmentation, reassembly, option processing (pages 217-300).

* ICMP: the Control Message protocol used by IP to exchange control and service information between nodes. Description of ICMP input processing (diagram and source code at pages 310-313), correction of meaning name "ping" (page 316), redirect processing.

* TCP Protocol: as a state dependant protocol (pages 802-994). Describes the state transition, initial state and final state hand-shake, and control timers (pages 817-847) including an interesting retransmission timeout computing formula (pages 831-847).

I bought this book because I was faced with having to port an application that uses BSD routing sockets and interface management ioctls to an operating system that doesn't support either of these features. The book contained enough information about these fairly obscure constructs that I was able to figure out what the mystery program was doing.

This is a bible, sliced into 3 neat pieces to explain and demonstrate everything related to TCP/IP right from the 0's and 1's in the packet. It is something like a must have set of books for someone who really wants to know the basics of networking right from its foundations.

It is not so good than real steven's volume I. It has not been written by steven. But has a good review for TCP/IP stack.

I knew that this book is good, but it is more than good. You can find here any IP - related information, explained from simple to complex in all aspects. The information I was trying to find from different sources (Wikipedia etc), is just concentrated in the book.