The Switch Book: The Complete Guide to LAN Switching Technology

by Rich Seifert

Book Overview

The most in-depth guide to the capabilities, application, and design of LAN switches and switched internetworksWritten by an innovator who has been at the forefront of networking technology for more... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0471345865
• ISBN13: 9780471345862
• Release Date: June 2000
• Publisher: Wiley
• Length: 720 Pages
• Weight: 3.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.7" x 7.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

This book is perfect!

I have been in the telecom industry for 8 years and have worked with ATM, TDM and SONET/SDH. The time has come for me to join the switching and routing folks. I have read a number of technical books relevant to what I do, and I have never finished one (cover to cover). It was not until I bought "The Switch Book" that I actually could not stop reading this book. It is the perfect book if you want to get into the switching world. In fact he explains fundamentals, history and technology so well that you cannot help but learn it. His style of writting, his sense of humor and the way the book is organized is fantastic. A must have and a must read.

JOY to read.

There are many books on LANs and switching. Most of them are too basic and not well written. "The Switch Book" is a rarity in this crowded field. It covers a lot of different aspects of switching in great detail, yet the book is so well written that it can be read in a week! I read it four times from cover to cover now and every time I learned something new. At our company we require every new application engineer to buy this book. I will love to see Mr. Seiffert write a follow up to this book covering more advanced topics. It is reading good books like this that makes a person feel sane, that one wasn't imagining that the other books were badly written rush jobs. This book joins the list of other excellent books like Stevens' "TCP/IP Illustrated."

One of the top 4 books for low level OSI lurkers

I work in the bottom 3 OSI layers and pretty much refer back to the same 3 books all the time:1. Ethernet by Charlie Spurgeon2. TCP/IP Vol 1 by W.Richard Stevens3. Switched, Fast and Gig Ethernet by Breyer & RileyThese 3 books are tops. The Switch Book belongs right up there with these three.

One of ze best !!

The main reason I'm writing this review is that I feel that this book is not getting the readership it "rich"ly deserves.Rich covers the basics of Lans with elan (all puns copyrighted).You will understand the concepts and implementation of bridging thus allowing you to view routing in a better perspective.Rich's laws of networking are absolutely gems: a chapter summarized into a line.His excellent and generous use of flowcharts and diagrams deserve some stars by themselves.Also the description of the protocols, the tradeoffs made during their design leaves you with an insight as to how to (and in some cases how not to) design a working protocol.The last chapter is a gem - it covers the life of a packet as it enters the bridge till it exits on one of the ports.If you're a router guy, read this and you'll never sneer at a bridge again.The explanations are lucid,simple to the point and are peppered with the odd bad engineering joke (better than Radia Perlman's sarcasm :)]I bought this book based on other readers recommendations and am glad for the same.This book is a networking bible along with those by Stevens,Comer,Perlman and of course thomas maufer.While you can more or less read any chapter in isolation, you are recommended to go in order to maximize your output from this book.PS: A layer 1 switch is a shared hub or a repeater * A layer 2 switch is a bridge * A layer 3 switch is a router *The rest of this review was lost due to collisions on the lan. Back off Rich,Back off !! :)

Excellent book for learning all about switching

Rich Seifert has played a significant role in the development of Ethernet and other high-speed LAN standards and is the perfect person to write a book on this subject. Also an excellent teacher, Rich knows how to take the reader from basic introductory information through comprehensive technical details, with an often humorous writing style that works for advanced-level engineers and ordinary people like me who are mathematically-challenged! If you need to design, install, or manage networks with switching and need to fully understand Layer 2 and 3 switching, Virtual LANs, Link Aggregation, QoS, and more, this book is a must-have. Simply understanding the terminology used when talking about switching will help the reader select the correct products for his or her needs. Rich does a great job of cutting through the marketing hype. Of course, I am biased in that Rich and the publisher asked me to be one of the early reviewers of this book and I thought it was great then and am thrilled that it is finally available for the rest of the world.