I found it to be too academic, too high-level - and too top down! I had already read TCP/IP illustrated before I took the class, so I had no trouble intuiting what the authors were trying to say, but I was in class with a lot of people who had no real exposure to network concepts outside of surfing the web, and they were all horribly confused by the abstraction in the book. I wouldn’t even say it’s worth coming back to after you’ve read a better networking book: I didn’t learn anything from it that I didn’t already know.
On the other hand I would say, I learned a lot from this book. I too had no exposure to network concepts but after finishing half the book I learned a lot.
Comments
You said it's terrible but did not state why!
I found it to be too academic, too high-level - and too top down! I had already read TCP/IP illustrated before I took the class, so I had no trouble intuiting what the authors were trying to say, but I was in class with a lot of people who had no real exposure to network concepts outside of surfing the web, and they were all horribly confused by the abstraction in the book. I wouldn’t even say it’s worth coming back to after you’ve read a better networking book: I didn’t learn anything from it that I didn’t already know.
On the other hand I would say, I learned a lot from this book. I too had no exposure to network concepts but after finishing half the book I learned a lot.