Network Analysis, Architecture and Design, Second Edition

Rating:
Summary: Just as good as the first edition
Review: I highly recommend this book for anyone doing network design or for anyone saddled with a network designed by someone else. The second edition still has all the good material from the first edition about flow analysis and requirements analysis. It also has additional information related to network architectures. The new material on architectures for security and privacy is especially relevant to today's environment.

I appreciated the explanations of why a systematic approach to network design is even more relevant today than ever due to the complexity of systems, applications, requirements, and even users who are much more sophisticated than they once were. Network engineers who throw capacity at the problem with little analysis should read the book to understand the risks associated with this "methodology." As McCabe states, delay may be as important as capacity; and reliability, maintainability, and availability are often more important than overall throughput. Also, a network designer should practice due diligence in developing reproducible solutions that can be proven to meet the project goals.

I like the Preparation section at the beginning of each chapter. The author talks about the prerequisites for understanding the material in the chapter and lists books that the reader can check out first to gain the requisite knowledge. The author applied hierarchy (a theme in the book) even to the list of references! This is a better way of doing a bibliography than the linear list at the end of books that you so often see.

My only minor complaint is that I never did get used to RMA standing for reliability, maintainability, and availability. Every time I saw the acronym I had to try to remember what it stood for. But that's minor compared to my overall "thumbs-up" reaction to the book.