BKINTSYS.RVW  930824
 
Addison-Wesley Publishing Co.
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Reading, MA   01867-9984
800-527-5210
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800-447-2226
"Internet System Handbook", Lynch/Rose, 1993, 0-201-56741-5
 
I'm beginning to wonder about "handbook" in all these titles of telephone book
sized tomes.  On the other hand, you have to love an author/editor who opines
that the reason the Internet succeeded was because the researchers' hearts were
pure.
 
In the preface, the editors suggest that this book is for the competent
engineer, manager and administrator.  Unfortunately, they are less clear on
*what* the work is for.
 
The book is divided into four parts.  The first section deals with an
historical and organizational background to the Internet.  The three articles
have very similar contents but slightly differing perspectives.  From a
"Readers' Digest" anecdotal overview we move to an international examination,
and thence, to a discussion of the evolving standard.
 
The second section deals with technical aspects of the major protocols and
applications of the Internet.  As promised, the chapters are written by the
people who built the Internet.  The author of the chapter on "Core Protocols",
for example, is Vinton Cerf.  As well as the core protocols, routing protocols,
the main applications (mail, FTP and remote access), practical routing, host
networking, security and applications development are covered.
 
Part three, titled "Infrastructure," covers issues not centrally relevant to
the operation of the Internet, but supporting its use.  Network performance and
management, backbone and node tools, directory services and operational
security are dealt with here.  Details are, perhaps, necessarily restricted in
this section.  The chapter on directory services, for example, gives sample
finger and WHOIS sessions but does not offer any contacts for NETFIND, Knowbot
or X.500 servers.
 
The title of the final section can be interpreted different ways.  There is a
very specific article on the impending node number exhaustion on the Internet,
a generic change and evolution of internetworking (which turns out to be more
nearly a treatise on the evolution of computing itself) and an excellent
annotated bibliography by John Quarterman (cf. BKMATRIX.RVW).  The
bibliographic information contained in the book overall might be worth the
price alone.  Quarterman's contribution is carefully and fully researched and
well organized.  It includes not only texts, but periodicals and online sources
as well.
 
The editors see this work as a reference. It certainly is that, and, as well,
it is a pointer to further information in the bibliographies.  Although the
style is very different, the contents are remarkably similar to Douglas Comer's
"Internetworking with TCP/IP" (cf BKINTTCP.RVW).  This work tends to add some
material from the "higher" (application level) layers of the communications
model.  Comer's work tends to be more directly connected with technical detail;
this work, while definitely technical, introduces the reader to the people of
the Internet.
 
copyright Robert M. Slade, 1993   BKINTSYS.RVW  930824