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Rating: 
Summary: Not as useful as I'd hoped
Review: It turns out to be as much user manual for a validation tool, which is ok. I'd been hoping to use it to check a complicated protocol for a product I was building, but couldn't make any progress in a month. Partly this is my own inadequacy, partly its a problem of applying formal methods to real-world cases, and partly its a problem of examples that are too simple (reflecting the problems of formal methods).On the other hand, the description of race conditions in the introductory material is lucid, and if you haven't designed in and debugged a few of those, you might find it valuble. A bit pricey for that, though.
Rating:
Summary: Not as useful as I'd hoped
Review: It turns out to be as much user manual for a validation tool, which is ok. I'd been hoping to use it to check a complicated protocol for a product I was building, but couldn't make any progress in a month. Partly this is my own inadequacy, partly its a problem of applying formal methods to real-world cases, and partly its a problem of examples that are too simple (reflecting the problems of formal methods). On the other hand, the description of race conditions in the introductory material is lucid, and if you haven't designed in and debugged a few of those, you might find it valuble. A bit pricey for that, though.
Rating: 
Summary: Makes you feel the complexity of protocol design
Review: It's clear that this book is a little bit outdated compared to Holzmann's recent book on the SPIN model checker. However, i feel that the SPIN book does not explain how difficult it is to design even very simple protocols. In this one, Holzmann provides examples of protocols that look really simple while proving their correctness is utterly difficult. The examples are of particular interest for people working in networking. The interest of this book is mainly historical, since it treats protocol standardization and the design problems in early computer protocols. The latter half of the book presents the Promela language and the associated SPIN model checker, both of which are far better presented in the recent book "The SPIN model checker" by the same author (hence only the four stars since half of the book is now outdated).
Rating: 
Summary: excellent book for network protocol designers
Review: You have probably read the text from the back cover of the book, which is cited above. Every word of it is true. This is an excellent book, even for (serious) beginners, but also for experts who need some advice on how to avoid bad designs. All in all it is a joy to read this book as a thorough introduction to the subject. But I have to mention some criticism: 1. Holzmann did the research for the book in the late 1980s and the book was copyrighted in 1991. Therefore some parts look a bit dated now. 2. This is probably one of the best books on the design of network protocols. But who designs protocols ? Do you intend to specify a new protocol ? Probably not. For all those mere mortals who just want to have a quick look at the basics of network protocol, this book is probably too much material. And I am afraid, those few people who do indeed design protocols might take it as a weakness of the book that it does not focus on their favourite protocol family. Instead, Holzmann shows them how to design and verify (!) the correctness of completely new protocols. 3. Network protocols have a long history ! Still today we can learn from historical prototypes. Their basics can be traced back hundreds of years and it is a joy to see how Holzmann mentions them again and again even in the later (more formal) chapters.
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