IP Routing Fundamentals

This is a great book. Mr. Sportack provides his readers with a fluent overview of network engineering as it relates to WAN technology. He breaks his book down into four well organized and well developed sections. The first section discusses the essance of LAN funtionality. He talks about the OSI model, data, IP addressing, scalibility, growth constraints and resolutions for those constraints.Then he dedicates several chapters to WANs. He talks about how they communicate and he gives a fantastic overview of WAN protocols that use Circuit, Packet, and Cell switching technologies as well as an indepth sectin on media.The third section covers the routing protocols. Why? So you can design your routed network and choose the best protocols based on your network needs and the protocols performance benifits and constraints.The fourth section covers engineering a Network. He discusses topoligies, protocols, and blended systems. The graphics and style of this book are indicitave of a great communicator. Before I read this book I could confuse anybody I talked to about networking, now I can communicate these complex issues on a more down to earth level. Mr. Sportack should be highly commended for this book.

This book is the definitive introduction to routing in networks using IP. It explains the various transmission technologies, routing protocols, and routed protocols (IPv4, IPv6). After reading this book you feel the need for buying more Cisco books and you'll not have problems with doing so because you already know the basics of IP routing.

This book provides good insight as to the operation of protocols. This is the only book that mentioned why RIP doesn't load balance(It maintains a single route to any given destination in its routing table). Compares RIP to IGRP explaining why IGRP combined metrics surpasses RIPv2 in scalability. Excellent coverage of EIGRP vs OSPF explaining how the Hybrid EIGRP borrows from both distance vector and link state protocols providing ease of use and robustness. The mechanics of routing is discussed in detail describing every detail of how packets traverse a network. I highly recommend this book for any Internetworking Engineer's library. I also recommend "Routing TCP/IP" author: Jeff Doyle

As a total novice with internetworking, I bought this book as an intro... what a good choice!Easy to read and complete... I was able to easily survive[and thrive] in a Router Config class with people that do it everyday.

This book was a pleasure to read and provided much needed insight into interior gateway routing protocols, such as RIP, IGRP, EIGRP, and OSPF. Although this book did not cover configuration information as relevant to Cisco routers, nor did it provide discussion into any of the exterior gateway routing protocols, this book is a great reference when questions arise about the mechanics of IP interior gateway routing protocols.