A comparison of textbooks about Internet (TCP/IP) technology
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I am developing a technical university course about the Internet
application protocols. As part of this work, I have been looking at
suitable textbooks for such a course. Here is an overview of the
textbooks I have looked at and their suitability for my course.
I checked as follows:
Protocol fundamentals: I checked how good descriptions were given of
sliding windows and of caching.
Protocol descriptions: I checked this by looking at the description of
the DNS protocols.
Application protocols: I checked this by looking at the description of
SMTP and HTTP.
Scores given are my personal evaluation of how complete and easy-to-
understand descriptions were, given on a scale from 0-9, where 0 is
worst and 9 is best.
Author Title Publisher No. of Quality
Pages
Wilder, Floyd A Guide to Artech House 327 maybe
the TCP/IP 1993 ISBN 0-
Protocol 89006-693-0
Suite
Lynch, Daniel C. & Internet Addison-Wesley 821 maybe
Rose, Marshall T. System ISBN 1993 0-201-
Handbook 56741-5
Comer, Douglas E. Internetwork Prentice Hall 1812 good
& Stevens, David ing with 1996 ISBN 0-13-
L. TCP/IP 262148-7
Volume I,
II, III
Stevens, W. TCP/IP Addison-Wesley 1791 good
Richard, Wright, Illustrated, 1994 ISBN 0-201-
Gary R. Volume 1, 2 63346-9
Conclusion: None of the books are ideal for my course, since they are
very thick and contain a lot of material not needed for my course. Best
is probably to ask the publishers for permission to copy only certain
pages of the books for my course.
The two latter books above were best, but also thickest. Perhaps not
very surprisingly, none of the books gave any description at all of the
HTTP protocol.
For more information, see URL
http://www.dsv.su.se/~jpalme/internet-textbook-inventory.pdf
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Jacob Palme <jpalme(_at_)dsv(_dot_)su(_dot_)se> (Stockholm University and KTH)
for more info see URL: http://www.dsv.su.se/~jpalme