Rating: 
Summary: As an overview of dataComm principles - EXCELLENT
Review: The book provides the necessary maturity in datacomm principles and the initial grounding to proceed onto more thorough and detailed study (in any of the given areas). Exercises provide pointers for further study. However, do not expect a detailed knowledge in any of the topics covered by the book after reading it. Overall the book is very good, one of a kind, but costs too much.
Rating: 
Summary: A new edition to keep up with changing technology
Review: This book attempts to provide a unified overview of the broadfield of data and computer communications. The organization of thebook reflects an attempt to break this massive subject into comprehensible parts and to build, piece by piece, a survey of the state of the art. The book emphasizes basic principles and topics of fundamental importance concerning the technology and architecture of this field and provides a detailed discussion of leading-edge topics. This sixth edition is seeing the light of day less than 15 years after the publication of the first edition. Much has happened during those years. Indeed, the pace of change, if anything, is increasing. In this new edition, I try to capture these changes while maintaining a broad and comprehensive coverage of the entire field. To begin the process of revision, the fifth edition of this book was extensively reviewed by a number of professors who teach the subject. The result is that, in many places, the narrative has been clarified and tightened, and illustrations have been improved. Beyond these refinements to improve pedagogy and user-friendliness, there have been major substantive changes throughout the book. Every chapter has been revised, new chapters have been added, and the overall organization of the book has changed. The book is divided into five parts: Overview, Data Communications, Wide Area Networks, Local Area Networks, and Networking Protocols In addition, the book includes an extensive glossary, a list of frequently used acronyms, and a bibliography. Each chapter includes suggestions for further reading. END
Rating: 
Summary: interesting
Review: This book has been heaven sent for me, mainly because of my background. I have a EE background and I have been always wanting to know about the data networks. The first and the second parts of the book deals with the signalling and transmission media and also the basics of the data networks like data link control. I found these sections (mainly signalling) very weak and sub standard, but most of the CS students in the class were scratching their heads complaining that it was too complicated. The best thing in these sections is the data link control (just spectacular). The remaining parts of the books have covered data networks. Now some seasoned networking person would find these parts very abstract and not enough depth in it, but a novice that I was in data networks, I loved it.
The three sections are: WAN
LAN
Security and Internet and protocols The discussion on WAN/ATM is boring.
The best part of the book is in fact the LAN section.
Internet protocols are also well defined. Other strengths of the book:
1. A very smooth and progressive transition from the switched network discussion to the data networks discussion.
2. Some of the problems are pretty challenging and make you think beyond what you read in the book, some of the analytical problems are great.
3. Very analytical. Weaknesses:
1. Typical Stallings book, covers too much without going in the depth in any single topic.
2. The book spends almost equal time on all the technologies, some of the hot topics need to discussed more and the obsolete topics are not supposed to be discussed that much (typical Stallings) an example is token ring and ethernet have an equal amount of discussion, even though token ring is out.
3. The discussion on Fiber channel wherever is a joke, it is minimal and insufficient.
4. Too theoretical (stallings has done a much better work in his other work high-speed networks), but since this is the 1st book in networks, it is OK.
5. Very unpractical, you cant do anything more that you could not do before reading this book. The only thing that I learnt is how to identify the class of the network address (wow). So, if you ask me, IT is NOT a bible of computer networks. In fact, it should be recycled once you are done with it. But this is most definitely the 1st book on data networks, it has taught me more on any single topic than any other book I have read ever. The name of the book is misleading, it says "Data and compute networks" and then the book spends a good time on switched networks and also too much time on the signalling.
Rating:
Summary: Usage of this book depends on your background
Review: This book has been heaven sent for me, mainly because of my background. I have a EE background and I have been always wanting to know about the data networks. The first and the second parts of the book deals with the signalling and transmission media and also the basics of the data networks like data link control. I found these sections (mainly signalling) very weak and sub standard, but most of the CS students in the class were scratching their heads complaining that it was too complicated. The best thing in these sections is the data link control (just spectacular). The remaining parts of the books have covered data networks. Now some seasoned networking person would find these parts very abstract and not enough depth in it, but a novice that I was in data networks, I loved it.
The three sections are: WAN
LAN
Security and Internet and protocols The discussion on WAN/ATM is boring.
The best part of the book is in fact the LAN section.
Internet protocols are also well defined. Other strengths of the book:
1. A very smooth and progressive transition from the switched network discussion to the data networks discussion.
2. Some of the problems are pretty challenging and make you think beyond what you read in the book, some of the analytical problems are great.
3. Very analytical. Weaknesses:
1. Typical Stallings book, covers too much without going in the depth in any single topic.
2. The book spends almost equal time on all the technologies, some of the hot topics need to discussed more and the obsolete topics are not supposed to be discussed that much (typical Stallings) an example is token ring and ethernet have an equal amount of discussion, even though token ring is out.
3. The discussion on Fiber channel wherever is a joke, it is minimal and insufficient.
4. Too theoretical (stallings has done a much better work in his other work high-speed networks), but since this is the 1st book in networks, it is OK.
5. Very unpractical, you cant do anything more that you could not do before reading this book. The only thing that I learnt is how to identify the class of the network address (wow). So, if you ask me, IT is NOT a bible of computer networks. In fact, it should be recycled once you are done with it. But this is most definitely the 1st book on data networks, it has taught me more on any single topic than any other book I have read ever. The name of the book is misleading, it says "Data and compute networks" and then the book spends a good time on switched networks and also too much time on the signalling.
Rating: 
Summary: This book is NOT for beginners
Review: This book is definately for intermediate professionals NOT beginners. You can get high-level concepts from the books but the details and mathmatics behind the concepts are severely lacking. You cannot even answer the problems at the end of each chapter with the information given within the chapter. Avoid this book if you can -- if it's required text for a course then plan on buying supporting material.
Rating:
Summary: http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~avella/Telecom.html
Review: This book is excellent to explore the wonderful world of
NETWORKING...
Want to know more about Telecommunications Books
Visit my review of books On-line at the Telecom BookStore
http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~avella/Telecom.html>
ALEJANDRO AVELLA <Alejandro.Avella@Colorado.edu>
Rating:
Summary: Very weak and lacking better data/network books available
Review: This book only lightly touches subjects that any begining or intermediate network engineer would need to know about. The problems at the end of each chapter ask questions that are not addressed by the author or he only touches on briefly. Therefore making the reader locate another source to answer the authors question! He is to much into signal theory (who cares how I square wave is constructed) when was the last time you got out your O-scope to check and watch the signal variations on your network. It seems that this book is just thrown together to make a quick buck. Avoid it at all cost.
Rating:
Summary: Very weak and lacking better data/network books available
Review: This book only lightly touches subjects that any begining or intermediate network engineer would need to know about. The problems at the end of each chapter ask questions that are not addressed by the author or he only touches on briefly. Therefore making the reader locate another source to answer the authors question! He is to much into signal theory (who cares how I square wave is constructed) when was the last time you got out your O-scope to check and watch the signal variations on your network. It seems that this book is just thrown together to make a quick buck. Avoid it at all cost.
Rating: 
Summary: Too many topics too little time
Review: This book was well written and covered a broad range of topics which gives the reader a good general knowledge of how digital and analog signals work and how they are encoded and decoded. The author is very knowledgeable however he needs to realize that his readers are (perhaps) not as smart or experienced in this field as he is. The extensive use of acronyms throughout the text make it difficult at times to fully understand what is being taught. I found myself paging back in the book to look up the acronyms just to understand what I was reading. It would also be quite helpful if the author offered a study guide to accompany the text containg solutions the questions at the end of the chapter. Practice questions are a lot more helpful if the student actually has some way to verify that they are doing the questions correctly. Overall the book was well written although the author should concentrate on using full terms instead of stating the term at the beginning of the book and using the acronym through out the rest of the text.
Rating:
Summary: A good text to learn Nstworking from the gound up
Review: This book will provide a sound basis for understanding the electrical principles behind computer and communications networks.
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