BKCNTTIN.RVW   990618

"Connecting to the Internet", Andrew F. Ward, 1999, 0-201-37956-2,
U$19.95/C$29.95
%A   Andrew F. Ward
%C   P.O. Box 520, 26 Prince Andrew Place, Don Mills, Ontario M3C 2T8
%D   1999
%G   0-201-37956-2
%I   Addison-Wesley Publishing Co.
%O   U$19.95/C$29.95 416-447-5101 fax: 416-443-0948 bkexpress@aw.com
%P   291 p.
%T   "Connecting to the Internet"

The preface states that the book is for experienced network
administrators who are connecting their LAN to the Internet for the
first time.

Chapter one outlines IP internetworking and Internet services, but
spends most of its time dealing with routing.  The routing content is,
at one and the same time, much more detailed than most first time
administrators would probably want, and not particularly clear.  There
is a broad, but rather generic, guide to Internet Service Providers
(ISPs) in chapter two.  For connecting your LAN to the provider,
chapter three gives a comprehensive, but terse, outline of access
circuits.  A number of concepts and details of Internet security are
discussed, albeit very quickly, in chapter four.

Chapter five looks at practical details of network design, based on
the prior material, in terms of configuration.  Testing and
diagnostics are reviewed in chapter six.  Going live, in chapter
seven, notes the throwing of the final switches, as it were.  However,
it is also evident, at this point, that a number of areas, such as
policies, registration, and so forth, have been ignored in favour of
getting the hardware and software running.

The final chapter talks about management, but seems to assume some
ideal network where both users and providers are much more capable
than is generally the case.  As only one example, the text states that
complaints from users tend to come in the form, "Do we have some kind
of firewall that stops Application x from running?"  In reality, you
most often hear something like "My BuddyBox won't pop!" and must then
determine a) whether the user is trying to run a Wintel client on a
Mac, b) what and where the BuddyBox server is, c) that "pop" means
send, d) that the user has no Buddies, and e) that BuddyBox Inc. never
got beyond alpha release, and, in any case, has been bankrupt for
eight months.

Unfortunately, while there is a good deal of information in the book,
it has concentrated on those areas that sysadmins probably will
already have explored to some extent.  The topics left unexamined are
precisely those that technically aware Internet novices would need.

copyright Robert M. Slade, 1999   BKCNTTIN.RVW   990618