MPLS: Implementing the Technology (With CD-ROM)

Rating:
Summary: Good Book,will be a gem with a little more content
Review: A throughly readable good book,for first timers and the experienced,with detailed diagrams and explanations covering all the aspects of the mpls technology.Need a little more of implementation details with respect to the already highly advanced mpls implementations.Nevertheless a good book.

Rating:
Summary: The best MPLS book so far
Review: An excellent textbook on the development and underlying theory of MPLS. Eric Gray carefully educates the reader in the basic principles of MPLS. Additionally, some good material is included on appropriate uses of various parts of the MPLS standards. This attention to applications of the subject really make this book vital to the library of any network engineer. This book is highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: A so-so introduction to MPLS
Review: i agreed with Dr. Rick Miller's comments that "This book provides excellent historical perspective, but assumes the reader is already fairly comfortable with MPLS concepts and terminology. There are a number of forward references that could be confusing to a beginner. ... The detail decreases as the reader proceeds through the book...".
This book is not at all for the beginner who wants to know some meaningful details about MPLS. Mr. Gray often uses vague terms to describe somethings without giving a concrete example. For example (p.60), he says "a route determination function can offload a subset of its tasks, allowing a corresponding subset of packets to be forwarded without querying the route determination function for each packet processed." When a beginner like me reads this, he is going to ask "what subset of tasks? what corresponding subset of packets?" This kind of description can be spotted all over the book. The only materials i like are chap. 2 (Brief History Of MPLS) and some figures which show the encapsulation of MPLS labeled packet. i've read "MPLS, Technology and Applications", by Davie and Rekhter before reading this book. For a beginner who really wants to know the concrete details about MPLS, i highly recommand the book by Davie and Rekhter instead of this book.

Rating:
Summary: A so-so introduction to MPLS
Review: i agreed with Dr. Rick Miller's comments that "This book provides excellent historical perspective, but assumes the reader is already fairly comfortable with MPLS concepts and terminology. There are a number of forward references that could be confusing to a beginner. ... The detail decreases as the reader proceeds through the book...".
This book is not at all for the beginner who wants to know some meaningful details about MPLS. Mr. Gray often uses vague terms to describe somethings without giving a concrete example. For example (p.60), he says "a route determination function can offload a subset of its tasks, allowing a corresponding subset of packets to be forwarded without querying the route determination function for each packet processed." When a beginner like me reads this, he is going to ask "what subset of tasks? what corresponding subset of packets?" This kind of description can be spotted all over the book. The only materials i like are chap. 2 (Brief History Of MPLS) and some figures which show the encapsulation of MPLS labeled packet. i've read "MPLS, Technology and Applications", by Davie and Rekhter before reading this book. For a beginner who really wants to know the concrete details about MPLS, i highly recommand the book by Davie and Rekhter instead of this book.

Rating:
Summary: The book is "image" of Eric Gray
Review: I read many Eric publications especially on i-draft and RFC.
This book is okay f you want to read the theory & "higher" level of MPLS and you have experiences with MPLS before. Although still it's not too detail on few chapters.

Many chapters & paragraphs are a brief summary or copied prgh. from RFCs and I-drafts.

Rating:
Summary: An Outstanding Introduction to MPLS
Review: The book "MPLS: Implementing the Technology" by Eric Gray describes the basics of the MPLS protocol, its history, the architecture and implementation issues as well as service provisioning using MPLS.

This book is very well written and covers all the major aspects of the MPLS protocol. The content of the book is well structured and techniques and implementation details are illustrated with good examples.

The chapter on MPLS history is a bit too detailed (especially the 13 pages listing all the drafts and RFCs, but I guess even this part could save someone a lot of time browsing through all RFCs trying to figure out these documents.) And in contrast to the MPLS book by Davie and Rekhter the author does not spend a lot of time explaining the technologies that lead to MPLS, e.g. Ipsilons IP-Switching or CISCOs Tag-Switching, but rather concentrates on the current "standard" of the MPLS protocol.

The chapter on architecture does a good job in explaining how the components of the forwarding information base work while the chapter on implementation alternatives covers important issues like tunneling, encapsulation and label distribution.

Overall, this is a very good text on MPLS. It has a nice introduction, it is very well written and structured and easy to read. The content is complete, and the book has less than 200 pages. Bravo.

Rating:
Summary: The one MPLS book to have, if you're having only one.
Review: This book does a good job of explaining MPLS to general computer practitioners, as opposed to network experts. Then again, network experts will probably find it useful too.

I like the fact that after reading the introductory material, I could flip to most anywhere in the book at find self-contained answers to various questions which arose as I explored various aspects of MPLS.

I found the the history chapter particularly useful. It is comprehensible and offers the right level of detail to understand what problems MPLS has been developed to solve, what existing technologies it may displace, and conversely, what it will not do.

The only real drawback of this book is I feel like I got gyped out of two chapter introduction quips. What happened to Chapters 3 & 6?

Rating:
Summary: Great historical detail, not as strong on applications
Review: This book provides excellent historical perspective, but assumes the reader is already fairly comfortable with MPLS concepts and terminology. There are a number of forward references that could be confusing to a beginner.

Eric Gray brings a great deal of personal experience to bear in his very detailed description of the evolution of MPLS throught the IETF standards process. It is a remarkable feat, given the sometimes wildely diverse parties and agendas involved. He also uses up nearly a quarter of his book in presenting it.

The detail decreases as the reader proceeds through the book, as if the auther was getting tired of his topic. An example of this appears in the sections on "Piggyback Label Distribution Using RSVP" and "Label Distribution Protocol" in Chapter 6. Several paragraphs from these sections are word-for-word copies of each other with only a couple of terminology substitutions.

Nevertheless, Gray has done a good job of putting out a valuable piece on this still-emerging technology. He discusses applications more clearly than most other books on this topic and is not afraid to add caveats where they are needed.

I would not recommend this as a "first" or "only" book on MPLS, but it is a must read for someone interested in adding depth to their understanding of the topic.