Customer Rating: 
Summary: A classic
Comment: This is an outstanding successor to the excellent 3rd edition. Every employee of a telco, cableco, satco, cellco, IXC, ISP, VAN, systems integrator, and telecom equipment manufacturer should get a copy of this book, read it from cover to cover, and keep it handy in the office.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good Starting Point.
Comment: This was my Book for networks while doing my undergrad. Very good book. Simple to follow and understand. I loved this topic so much, I went ahead and took more networking classes and finally got my CCNA too. Few stuff outdated. but, its a good start.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Worst Tech Book Of The Decade!
Comment: I am currently using this book for a class I am taking at the local University. Let me just begin by saying, if this were the 13th century one would choose the iron maiden over reading this book. If it were possible to rate this book with no stars I would.
I have to say without exaggeration that this is the absolutely worst textbook I have ever used in my college career. It has been an extreme rare occurrence that I have sold a textbook at the conclusion of a class; however, this time will be the exception. At least with $15.00 I can buy lunch. Lunch will be worth more than the amount of information contained within this book.
I get the impression the author is more concerned with showing me how intelligent he is rather than teaching me the concepts he plans to quiz me about later.
One example he asks a question at the end of Chapter 3 regarding CRC checking.
Fortunately, I already knew the answer to this question based on experience. Does Tanenbaum discuss this within the chapter? No, instead he provides you with three pages (Pages 196-200) of superfluous material, in which if you had no idea how CRC checking works you would walk away stumped as to what the correct answer is.
Perhaps this book should be renamed to "Computer Networks: Stump The Monkey Questions At The End."
I pity anyone who has this assigned as a required text. Hindsight being 20/20 I would have probably purchased Douglas Comer's book "Computer Networks and Internets" as a supplement to teach me what Tanenbaum should have taught me in the first place.
After enduring an entire semester with Tanenbaum's book, I have a good understanding why Linux became more popular than Minix.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Good Find
Comment: Good visuals on encapsulation using a layered model. I particularly appreciate that many topics have a presentation for those having a superfluous understanding, as well as, for those having a mathematical bent toward learning (e.g. Fourier Analysis, State Diagrams, Exponential back off, etc).
The author does an excellent job in the hierarchical, broadcast, and multicast routing descriptions; which students can use in further network management analysis. From my experience, Network Management is a topic that many students fail to grasp effectively - largely because they are not adequately prepared in theory and lab experience before taking on graduate coursework. Many of the topics covered in the book are useful in other Computer Science or Information Technology classes.
The sections on IP Addressing are wonderful. The book introduces subnetting, CIDR, NAT in non-threatening fashion. If I were to pick one of the better presentation it would be - e-mail, MIME, Transport layer, and multimedia
Used in collaboration with a few other texts, this book is a must for your library.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Thaddy's comments
Comment: I have not completed the reading as yet but from what I have found so far this is a very good tutorial on computer networks.
Even on the subjects I used to have good prior knowledge of I have learned a different perspective and interesting new details. The text is also marked with many humouristic comments, which make the reading even easier.
The issues are well explained and served in a way facilitating good comprehension.
The reason I do not give the book 5 stars is that I am still some way from completing my reading so I do not have the overall picture as yet. However, I am really looking forward to move on with this assignment.
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