Sams Teach Yourself Network Troubleshooting in 24 Hours

I read the Descriptions and Reviews of 4 or 5 other books, before I made the purchase. I'm glad I bought this book! Jonathan Feldman is someone who has "been there and done that". In this book, he shares a *lot* of knowledge he's gained, over the years, working with Networks. I have recommended this book to friends and colleagues. One year ago, I purchased my first book about networks, "Networking Home PCs for Dummies". That book is now much too basic for me. I bought this book because I wanted to learn more about networks and how to fix problems in our home LAN. This book is oriented to people working with *much* larger networks than we have in our house and it will serve them well. It will also help people with small networks in their homes. I'm going to read it again, slowly, and this time do the exercises, to learn more.

I agree with everything below -- the book is like having an easy-to-use user's manual for our network -- and has enabled us to fix problems that in the past we have had to pay a real computer guru to fix. I strongly recommend it.

The network in our medical office is, all too often, more trouble than anything else. I've spent hours and hours fixing random problems that just should have been easier to tackle. On a friend's recommendation, I got this book and actually now understand how to figure out exactly what the problem is and how to fix it. Surprisingly funny and easy to read for a computer book. Bravo!

As an applications software consultant, I am constantly caught between the finger pointing of a shade-tree PC specialist and a Fortune 500 help desk trainee when my customers call and say "somethings's wrong with my system". The customer does NOT want to hear "talk to the PC guru who upgraded you PC from Win/3.1 to Win/98 and attached 4 more PC's and 5 printers to your network last night" or "you don't really believe it's a coincidence that the problem started this morning after the phone company technicians left, do you?". They want to hear a professional recommendation that helps to solve their immediate "crisis". This book gives practical advice (that I can understand) about network troubleshooting techniques (that I can use). Now I know what questions to ask, and what suggestions to make in order to help my customers get the critical-care they need to get back up and running quickly!

As the person in charge of the network for my department, I constantly browse new books to learn more on the subject. "Teach Yourself Network Troubleshooting" manages to do what most Teach Yourself or Dummies Guide books fail at -- combining enough substance to make the book useful at a level that won't bore the experts but won't confuse the novices. Anyone who works with or works on a network should have this book -- when something goes wrong, this book will clearly explain how to fix it.