Rating: 
Summary: Great on theory
Review: ...this book isn't a good choice for beginners. For serious network managers and operators though, it's a great book to have for background info and diagnosis. I have been involved with data networks for 15 years (SNA, X.25, DECnet IPX and the rest), and would put this book in the same league as the other classics. The material is very well organized and easy to read, with lots of examples. I highly recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Intro to TCP/IP Book
Review: Excellent book! Easy to read, and well organized.This is a great book for someone who needs to understand the basics of TCP/IP in relation to the internet. If you need to know the basics, then this is the book to get.
Rating:
Summary: Food for a TCP/IP junkie; looking forward to your next book!
Review: I can't learn enough about how TCP/IP packets appear at the hex and bit level. Call me crazy. That's what my job in network intrusion detection requires, so I appreciate authors like Richard Stevens and Eric Hall. These folks bring the details of TCP/IP to life, so I can apply that understanding to suspicious traffic. Eric's approach focuses on network monitor traces, nicely complementing Richard's TCPDumps. I would recommend checking O'Reilly's web site for the latest errata, even though none of the errors are enough to detract from this excellent reference work. I am actually more interested in seeing the companion volume, "Internet Application Protocols," as this is where some of the attack action occurs these days. Anyway, this book is in my top ten essential security reading list. Thank you Eric!
Rating:
Summary: The best book on the core protocols
Review: I can't think of enough superlatives to describe this book. As usual with O'Reilly, this is the most outstanding book in it's field. I have networking books out the wazzoo and they all talk about the osi model but never have I seen it explained so clearly. You will learn more about tcp/ip and the protocols surrounding it than with any other book.
As if that wasn't enough, the CD contains some excellent software (albeit limited somewhat) for monitoring your network *plus* all of the RFC's (ya, I know, they're all available for free on the web but it's handy to have them on the disk).
All in all, I'd say that this book really deserves more than 5 stars but that's all they allowed me to select. Short and sweet - buy this one.
Rating:
Summary: Well done
Review: The best thing about this book, which covers protocols like TCP and IP in detail, is that the discussion is from the ground-up, not from the top-down. I know what TCP/IP does for me at an application level, but I didn't know how TCP, or IP, or any of the other covered protocols, worked under the covers. Now I feel like I have a much better understanding of the details, which means I have a better understanding of a lot of things that are built on top of these protocols, as well as of system administration type tasks. Even the page after page of 'this bit field does this' text, which in most books would be rarely visited reference material, is decent, because individual reference sections contain real-world 'this means that' information. I would have liked a bit more discussion of Internet naming, IP address details, and so on, but I can find that information elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: Somewhat repetitious, but good material
Review: The text seemed to be fairly repetitive (defined here as repeating the same passages verbatim throughout the book often), so it appears it was written more as a reference manual that could be picked up when needed by those requiring a quick understanding of the various protocols. Some of this repetition could have been removed to make this book shorter, or to allow for more detail when it would have been helpful, such as when noting that TCP can run on raw Ethernet - this would seem to be an interesting topic to follow for a bit. That said, the book seems to provide a good foundation for those with some basic to moderate knowledge of TCP/IP. The TCP chapter is great, and Hall clearly knows his topic (along with every possible experimental RFC that could show up your network).
Rating: 
Summary: TERRIBLE! I've never wanted to send a book back before.
Review: This addle-headed mishmash was a complete waste of my time. Like a bad auto accident, I couldn't tear myself away- I kept hoping there would be some redeeming value buried in there somewhere. I was ultimately dissapointed as the clearest and most informative sections of the book were lifted wholesale from the relevant RFCs. The book is organized like a train wreck, and its format promotes bulk over useful content. Much text is obviously cut-and-pasted; whole paragraphs- several times. Beginning on ICMP, continuing through IGMP and then covering TCP and UDP!? You've got to be kidding. I wasn't even treated to a very in-depth or technical coverage of TCP and performance issues. It was just a cut and paste from the RFCs. This book is a total disaster. Eric Hall has the chutzpah to plug this waste of time in his .signature; every time I see it, I want to mail him a bill for the time I wasted reading it.
Rating: 
Summary: good book but too much repeated stuff
Review: This book is good for learning basic knoweledge of internet core protocols, definately not for beginners who don't know what protocols are all about. Sometimes gets a little bit complicated with all the 'sasquaches' etc. (You'll know what i mean if you get and read it..) Even though i liked reading the book i give it 4. (Well ok, maybe 4.5)
P.S.
If you are into protocols, this is definately the book you should read!
Rating:
Summary: Great introduction to TCP/IP!
Review: This book is true to its name as it covers the so-called Internet Core Protocols (TCP/IP, UDP, ARP, ICMP, and IGMP) very well. Chapter 1 is an overview of TCP/IP, Chapter 2 is an introduction to IP, and subsequent chapters describe the other protocols. The final chapter is a very detailed description of TCP. As an end-user who desired to learn more of the "basics" of these protocols, I learned quite a bit about how each protocol works. Each chapter describes the "inner workings" of each protocol, complete with sections on headers, messages, and so forth. Numerous screen captures help you gain further understanding of how each of these protocols works with each other. Not only is each protocol described well, there are also sections in each chapter on troubleshooting problems. The appendices describe how the Internet Standardization process, ie how RFC's (Request For Comments) get created and the processes they have to go through to be accepted. I had no idea what a long process it can be. If you're a System Administrator or someone who needs to learn the "basics" of TCP/IP, this is a great place to start.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent book for the basic protocols.
Review: This book, subtitled "An Owner's Manual for the Internet", does a very good work of explaining the core protocols - IP, ICMP, IGMP & multicasting, UDP, and TCP. Higher level protocols will, apparently, be covered in a future volume. Considering this volume quality, which follows O'Reilly's tradition of high standards, I cant wait for the second volume to come out. The readable & detailed explanations are accompanied by sample packet decodes (a lite version of the decoding is available on the accompanying CD), make the book an excellent study book for both students and network administrators.
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