Business Data Communications and Networking

This book started my career in IT, as a University course. This book is straightforward with diagrams all throughout. Some people may just not have like learning the material to not like the book itself, but it will show you everything you need to know to get a good Basis, foundation, in Networking (Not certifications, etc). I'm using other books/materials for my cert prep.

I've recently completed a course using this textbook. Excellent!!! It has been a long time (if ever) since I have actually enjoyed reading a textbook. I feel it should be mandatory reading for all authors and potential authors who will ever feel the need to publish a textbook for undergraduate level work in a technical field.Most of the many corrections on the online corrections page are minor and insignificant (i.e. typos) and would probably go unnoticed by the reader. With press deadlines in technologies being what they are, it is fully understandable. The choice to include those corrections (a) gave me a sense of security in that it demonstrated the author's thoroughness and (b) proves that you don't have to cut a new edition of your work every six months (which can be quite annoying for anyone who is looking to get a specific edition for class).I was pretty much convinced that it was impossible to design and publish a textbook in a technical field of a caliber such as this. In general, technical authors either confuse the reader by over complicating the layout and material or they put the reader to sleep by being overly shallow and overly redundant. This is not the case for this book. In the words of Goldilocks, this one is "just right". I strongly recommend it to anyone, whether they have a class requirement for it or not.

This book is great, it starts from the beginning of the networking age and goes through all the newest technologies and ideas about networking. Covers the business aspects of networking, wireless, how TCP/IP works and pretty muct the 802 standars. Book covers everything, this is one book I won't be selling back. A really good reference book for the basics of networking and rules to follow as well when getting into the networking field.

We used this book in my graduate MIS course, and it was a great tool for learning the basics about data communications and networking. Many of my classmates thought that Panko did a great job of explaining data comm concepts, whether it was something as simple as an ethernet LAN, or as complex as an ATM network. Everyone in my class seemed to enjoy the text (both highly technical students with a background in data comms, and students who were learning the material for the first time).The book is designed to give readers a general overview of a subject, then drill down into the details in later chapters. He starts with the basics (layers, encapsulation, protocols, etc), and then gets into how networks are built from the ground up. Panko has included numerous modules at the end of the book if you want to learn even more about a specific topic.The author has also put together slides for each chapter which were very helpful in explaining difficult concepts, or emphasizing certain chapters in the text. If you can get a copy of them, I highly recommend using them. I recommend this book for anyone looking for a way to learn a lot about data communications and networking. This book covers the gamut from LAN to WAN technology, packet switching, ATM networks, frames, IP addresses, etc. It can also serve as a tremendous reference if you need to review a topic later on down the road.

I find this book to be highly informative. It is certainly a good text book for business school undergraduates who have had no exposure to telecommunications.I would have liked the case studies to be included in the text book.However this is not a text book for Graduate students or computer science/engineering students.