Books for/about - isdn

Publisher: SitePoint
Authors: Matthew Eernisse

ISBN: 0975841947
List Price: $39.95
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Summary: Nice walkthrough, but a little too shallow
I like the writing in this book. The author definitely knows his stuff. The design of the book is a set of case studies that show how AJAX is used in various applications. And through those examples you learn not just AJAX but also the DOM and CSS.

My only gripe with the book is that it didn't go far enough. It's deep enough to get your toe wet. But when you want to get deeper you will need to get other books like the excellent "Dynamic HTML" book from O'Reilly.

Summary: Great Ajax book
The craze of Ajax has publishers rushing their own Ajax books to market to get a piece of the Ajax pie so to speak. This book sets itself apart from the other Ajax books for one reason...Clear, concise explanations with no confusing terminology! The author uses code snippets, browser results snapshots, and nice white space to allow the reader to digest what the author is talking about without getting overloading with techno-babble.

In my opinion, the most important part in learning Ajax is not the fancy DOM effects or the server-side coding to pull the data; it is understanding how you need to use the XMLHttpRequest object in sending and receiving requests from the server. The way we program our web applications to send and receive data from the server has changed with Ajax and this book shows the reader in gradual steps how to utilize the Ajax pieces in creating some useful editions to your website.

This book assumes you have knowledge of CSS and JavaScript, but that's it. You don't have to be a guru in either, just have a good basic understanding of each. The rest will be supplied by the author's code examples. Actually reading this book and learning Ajax will help you create better accessible website (even if you don't use Ajax), because it focuses on using technologies where they can degrade nicely if the user of the site does not have the most up-to-date browser or is using a screen reader which would definitely hinder on the web experience.

The most important chapter(s) in my opinion are Chapters 2, 3 and 4 where the author explains in great detail the XMLHttpRequest object and how is it is used to send a request asynchronously in getting requests from the server. I really like (as mentioned before) how the author stresses graceful degradation in case the object is not supported in the user's browser. Most of the other books that I have read through on Ajax do not even mention this and is a vital part in creating accessible web sites. Chapter 3 continues the theme on understanding the basics of asynchronous server requests with some useful examples that can be used right away in most websites. IE issues on memory leaks (hopefully eliminated with IE7), CSS and JavaScript differences are also discussed. Of course most other books slip other these simple things that can cause you hours of debugging and research on your part. Chapter 4 is the meat and potatoes of using GET and POST and how different salutations would lead you to using either one. Some nice useful, "real-world" examples are show and I have already incorporated one of these already. The author shows you how to incorporate Ajax in a simple login page to make it look more professional. Another topic in this chapter that I have never seen in another Ajax book is how Ajax is can be used with screen readers and has information on how to test it for (JAWS, IBM Home Page, Windows-Eyes, and Hal). That is another great addition that should be in every Ajax book (and actually most other web design and development books). I never knew how to test my web pages in screen readers until I read this chapter on it. Great Job!

The rest of the book focuses on incorporating different web services, how to not loose the Back button, and creating some fancy DOM-based effects with Ajax.

This should be your first book you get on Ajax (maybe not your last --- unless the author writes another book), and hopefully you will become a better web designer/developer because of it, I know I have.

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	MPLS Configuration on Cisco IOS Software Publisher: Cisco Press Authors: Umesh Lakshman Lancy Lobo
ISBN: 1587051990 List Price: $75.00 Amazon Price: $64.53 Usually ships in 24 hours Buy this book from amazon.com or from amazon.co.uk	Avg Cusomer Rating: Reviews: Summary:

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	Designing Storage Area Networks: A Practical Reference for Implementing Fibre Channel and IP SANs, Second Edition Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional Authors: Tom Clark
ISBN: 0321136500 List Price: $54.99 Amazon Price: $34.64 Usually ships in 24 hours Buy this book from amazon.com or from amazon.co.uk	Avg Cusomer Rating: 5 Reviews: Summary: Understand technology behind without reading T11 standards This book is quite dry, no question about that, but not as dry as the standards published by organizations in charge with Fibre Channel standards. Yet, as a SAN designer or SAN administrator you can find in it all the information you need to understand the inner details of a Loop Insertion Primitive or how an Alternate buffer-to-buffer credit model works. Compared with other books on the subject is remarcably error free and I was nicely impressed by Mr. Clark's considerations upon what should be the customer' role in steering vendors in developing products that are more open and interoperate better. Summary: Very detailed description of SAN technology This was a very good overview of the many varied components and technologies that make up a storage area network. It goes into a lot of detail about things like standards, protocols, speeds, etc. If you want to understand the differences between iSCSI and FCIP, for example, this is the book for you. The word "Reference" in the subtitle is accurate. It's not a guide on how to administer a SAN day-to-day in the real-world; it's about the concepts and details of what a SAN really is. The writing style is a little dry, but I didn't expect it to be a page-turner. My only disappointment was when I realized that over 1/4 of the book is devoted to appendices, glossary and index instead of written content. Summary:

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ATM Theory and Applications

Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
Authors: David E. McDysan Darren L. Spohn

ISBN: 0070453462
List Price: $69.99
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Summary: Definitive reference on ATM
This book is packed with everything. It is the definitive reference on ATM. If you just want an overview, the book is not for you. If you want to understand ATM in depth, this is it. It is valuable not only for network engineers, but also for product engineers designing new equipment or software. However, McDysan has also come out with a new book titled ATM & MPLS Theory and Application. Unless you are certain you will never need to know about MPLS, I would suggest getting the newer book. I haven't had a chance to read that one yet, but I would expect it is the excellent equivalent of this book with additional coverage of MPLS.

Summary: What a great book!
If you work with ATM or need to design networks for ATM, you need to have this book on your shelf. It is the argument-settler and really the best reference on ATM available (that can be understood). Matter of fact, I would go as far to say that this is the only ATM book worth buying.

Summary: Tedious, pompous...but good on certain select topics
I turned to this book to understand how the various ATM functions work. I had quite a bit of both practical and conceptual networking background prior to opening this book. As such, I've read quite a number of good and bad technical books on various networking topics.

If you'd rather not read the rest of this review here's the gist. Don't buy this book. Instead, buy Oliver C. Ibe's 'Essentials of ATM Networks and Services'. After you've mastered that, use Mark Miller's 'Analyzing Broadband Networks' to see how ATM Layer PDUs are put together and exchanged in various situations like call setup/teardown etc.

Here's the rest of the review.

Within minutes of reading, I got that old My-Head-Is-Swimming feeling. Not because I couldn't understand what the authors were saying, but more so because I couldn't figure out why on earth I was reading stuff that was irrelevant. Here are a few cases in point:

Every ATM book I've thumbed through religiously talks about the B-ISDN model. And when it starts explaining how something in ATM acutally works (say SSCOP), there is no reference to any of the terms that were introduced and defined in talking about the B-ISDN model. Why talk about the model at all then? This book is no exception.

The vast number of initial pages (285 in fact!) dedicated to talking about things like X.25, FR, multiplexing schemes etc. are useless. If you don't know this stuff, you have no business reading a book dedicated to ATM. And if you're just learning this stuff, there's no way you're going to really understand ATM. And of course, these authors couldn't resist the whole 'business drivers for ATM' nonsense.

The only redeeeming part about the book was Chapter 25 on Traffic Engineering. Just goes to show what technical authors can do when they're talking about stuff they know really really well. This is also the chapter where the authors use language relatively more precisely and concisely - a rare blessing in this overall tedious and pompous book.

Someone ask these guys to check out (...)!

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Traffic Engineering with MPLS

Publisher: Cisco Press
Authors: Eric Osborne Ajay Simha

ISBN: 1587050315
List Price: $55.00
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Avg Cusomer Rating: 4
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Summary: Not for the technically weak....
Traffic Engineering with MPLS (ISBN 1587050315)
Eric Osborne, Ajay Simha

As most CCIE's do, I ventured out in search of my next technical mastery. After reading the MPLS and VPN Architectures book from Cisco Press, I decided to venture onward into the Traffic Engineering aspect of MPLS. WoW! There sure is a lot of information out there and this book does a good job on covering the in depth details of the topic. I would however not recommend this book if you haven't read the first book mentioned as a primer/base for your MPLS knowledge because this one dives in deep very quickly.

I work for a large service provider and we are designing a new MPLS based network to support several very large customers global networks therefore I need to be on top of the MPLS game. Not only does this book cover the MPLS TE concepts very well but also gets in to the tough areas of QOS such as RSVP, Diffserv and even into SPF!

The chapters that I found the most rewarding were chapters 9 and 10 because not only are the diagrams easy to follow and apply to the topic at hand but they discuss the "knobs" that's be tweaked to make MPLS do exactly as you want it to which is the goal of this book.

This book also covers topics such as IS-IS, Multicast routing, LDP-TDP, and the innards of MPLS as well as TE.

Summary: Excellent book - not for the technically weak.
As most CCIE's do, I ventured out in search of my next technical mastery. After reading the MPLS and VPN Architectures book from Cisco Press, I decided to venture onward into the Traffic Engineering aspect of MPLS. WoW! There sure is a lot of information out there and this book does a good job on covering the in depth details of the topic. I would however not recommend this book if you haven't read the first book mentioned as a primer/base for your MPLS knowledge because this one dives in deep very quickly.

This book also covers topics such as IS-IS, Multicast routing, LDP-TDP, and the innards of MPLS as well as TE.

Summary: Only book of it's type
I'm up to P.274.

Two reasons I bought this book
- I needed to know about MPLS TE
- I don't think there are any other MPLS TE books around.

I've worked in a SP for 3 years on MPLS/VPN so I'm familiar with labelly things.

On the whole it's good but not great. It is NOT in the same class as Jeff Doyle for clarity.

The book has no Glossary - incredible!

P.48 Fig. 2-10, text box on top right needs English fixed.
P.49 Does VC merge use AAL5 'last cell' bit in ATM header? If so, say so.
P.62 Hellos & Keepalives 'explanation' is confused.
P.93 I found the explanation on Affinity very confusing and had to read it many time to comprehend it. I expect to have to read this a

few times but not many. Eg. I gather Attribute is what is configured on link and Affinity is what is configured on Headend and is

therefore carried in protocol (which protocol: CSPT or RSVP-TE?)
P.96 "Tunnel affinities and link attributes can be confusing" then rework the explanation so it's clear.
P.115 Table 4-1 called "Class Map Matches". Is this right?
P.143 to 158 All the packet contents should have been put in an appendix.
P.146 "Yes, this is confusing", for something which is quite simple.
P.160 *** Excellent idea putting line numbers in so they can be refered to in explanation. ***
P.172 Paragraph starts "This can be confusing to most people". What a negative way to start the explanation! This is code for 'we

didn't work long enough at the explanation long enough to make it clear'.
P.177 "top link to gsr8" and there is only one link.
P.185 "Example 4-32" should be "Example 4-34".
P.186 "Example 4-0" in 3 places should be "Example 4-35", "Example 4-36", "Example 4-37" respecively.
P.236 Needs clarification & correction to,
"Figure 5-11 shows an *abnormal* scenario in which changing the metric *before* SPF, rather than *after* makes a difference. Note that

text on Table 5-17 correctly says *before*.

P.242 In table 5-21 and just after it should emphasise which is unexpected behaviour and why.
P.242 Last paragraph "Router F" should be "Router G". "B->D->E->F" should be "B->D->E->G". "C->E->F" should be
P.270 2nd bullet point "In both the ip2mpls ans mpls2mpls pop cases.." is confused since 'ip2mpls' is not label popping but label

imposition. However this is in sync with paragraph which follows it "...if you set a packet's EXP values differently from the

underlying IP packet (which is ip2mpls), or if change the EXP values in the top of a label stack (which is mpls2mpls).
P.274, Fig. 6-8. There is no explanation for why ip2mpls and mpls2mpls don't follow the rules of P.273 Table 6-5. Presumably it's so

that at mpls2ip, the EXP overwriting it's equivalent DSCP can be seen. Same comment for Figs. 6-9 and 6-10.

Cisco Press had no errata for this book 3nov03.

I'm sure there were other reviews of this book when I looked here a few weeks ago ?!?!?!

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QoS and Traffic Management in IP and ATM Networks

Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
Authors: David E. McDysan

ISBN: 0071349596
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Avg Cusomer Rating: 5
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Summary: Excellent progression, excellent references
Dr. McDysan covers some very complicated topics, but starts at the beginning and works up to them, so that the reader can enter the discussion at their comfort level. The treatment is broad, with enough depth to provide the essential flavor, and plenty of references for further research when needed. A good QoS jumpstart that made me the local expert for the day :)

Summary: Excellent Book; don't believe Ma
Excellent organization in a way I have not seen in any other book: 7 parts, each with three chapters that gradually increase in level of difficulty. In depth review of all the basic concepts in probability and queuing. I am half way through it and already think it was worth it, even if the book only had the chapters I have read so far.

Summary: Bad content ...
We will have to wait some time longer for a good book on QoS. This is definitely not "the" book to read. The reasons are:

* This book needs an editor. The language needs to be simplified. (e.g. a sentence in chap 3: packet networks define capacity defined in packet-or-cells per second ... What do I make out of that sentence? And this is just one example.)

* This book needs a better technical review (IPv6 header is termed IPv4 header!)

Essentially, I think, the author started off with a "noble idea" of enlightening us "kids" with some Qos concepts. (I actually bought the book after reading through the table of contents, and the author's brief biography.) The author intended to organize the book well. But, he totally blew it on contents. In the preface the author states that "a central theme of the book is old-fashioned common sense." Then in chapter 3 the author goes on to explain why bandwidth and link capacity are different and instead of explaining in easier language the actual difference between baud, bandwidth, and bits-per-second, the author rambles into data communications theory and does a horrible job of it! He does not do justice either to the math of data communications or to common sense. Again, this is but one example.

So, in summary, this book is definitely not worth wasting your time and money on.

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The Intelligent Network Standards: Their Application to Services

Publisher: McGraw-Hill Professional
Authors: Igor Faynberg Lawrence R. Gabuzda Marc P. Kaplan Nittin J. Shah

ISBN: 0070214220
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Avg Cusomer Rating: 3
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Summary: Heavy on the AIN standards, sketchy on the applications.
This book gives a quite comprehensive roadmap and tour of the AIN standards. There are very useful reference sections and tables describing the various standards documents, what each contains, and how they relate to each other. In addition, the book contains one of the clearer descriptions of the AIN architectural concepts that I've come across. However, the book it actually a collaboration of several authors, each covering a separate area of the AIN architecture. This leads to a lack of continuity and a large variance in depth of coverage between chapters. Finally, some of the material simply regurgitates the contents of the standards themselves, providing less insight into an admittedly difficult subject than one would have hoped. But it *is* comprehensive.

Overall, a useful book. I'd recommend it for engineers and managers who need to work directly in the telephony field. Not for the casual reader who just wants to know what AIN is all about.

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Sams Teach Yourself AJAX in 10 Minutes (Sams Teach Yourself in 10 Minutes)

Publisher: Sams
Authors: Phil Ballard

ISBN: 0672328682
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Avg Cusomer Rating: 4
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Summary: Good general overview of AJAX
I was looking for some basic information on AJAX, such as the XMLHttpRequest object. I was not aware that simple HTM (or any other text) could be passed back from the web server, now I know and that's very useful to know, since those are more useful to me that XML. This book gave me the general basic info I needed. Now that I've got a working knowledge of AJAX, I can find another book with more detail for more advanced uses of the capability.

I think the book wasted space with it's attempt at an intro to html and intro to javascript. I'm not sure that anyone unfamiliar with these aspects of web development needs to be tackling AJAX, because they're probably not the least bit knowledgeable of server-side technology.

I would have appreciated the server-side scripting to be ASP instead of PHP (with which I'm not familiar), but that's a minor issue since the scrips are small and easy enough to grasp what they're doing.

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