DHCP, a Guide to Dynamic RtCP/IP Network Configuration [With CDROM]

Berry Kercheval's book on DHCP fills a gap that has been there for several years, but has become increasingly apparent over the course of the last few years. Until now, you had to either dig into the official RFC documents if you wanted to learn about the gritty details of DHCP and related protocols or you could resort to the documentation that your vendor decided to ship -- if any. For some of the older and more established protocols, (such as ARP, UDP, TFTP, ...)helpful informationwas available from books such as Richard Steven's "UNIX Network Programming".This new book, discusses DHCP in great detail and comes with lots of relevant illustrated examples that are clearly split into both client- and server-specific cases. All of the related protocols are explained and examples are given -- albeit not with the same level of detail as for DHCP.One highly useful chapter, lists the majority of DHCP clients and servers that are currently in use. It then goes on to provide useful tips and tricks, and points out strengths, weaknesses, and idiosyncracies. It is interesting to note, that the author makes a point in keeping this chapter -- as all of the other chapters -- as independant of particular architectures (e.g. UNIX, Windows, Mac) as possible. To system adminstrators who have to deal with heterogenous networks, this is a welcome change from the majority of books on networking that are currently on the market.I would recommend "A Guide to Dynamic Tcp/Ip Network Configuration" to anybody who needs to learn more about the internals of the DHCP protocol. It is invaluable to people implementing their own DHCP software; administrators configuring DHCP clients and servers will find relevant background information that will prove crucial once a DHCP installation needs to be debugged or once network topology and system configuration gets more complex than the simple cases anticipated by vendors of DHCP software; and finally, anybody who always wanted to know what made their computers tick, will find Berry Kercheval's book a very readable and gentle introduction into a complex subject matter.