Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach (4th Edition)

As a student who used this as a textbook, I might have a different perspective than you are expecting. I would guess, however, that this book is used primarily as a textbook for college courses.

What I liked about this book:
- Plenty of helpful images (lots of diagrams)
- Nice segmentation of information (logicial and digestable sections)
- Usually easy (to understand) reading
- Straight forward (easy) and seemingly important review questions and problems (at the end of every chapter)

What I did not like:
- Sometimes a little indirect
- Sometimes quite boring (but this shoud be expected when you are reading about network protocols and mechanisms)

So, as a textbook, I think it was actually pretty good, but I would find little use for it outside of my college course because it is too indirect and too conceptual to be useful for reference and it is too dry (boring) to keep as reading material (unless you are one really freaky nerd).

I have read many "bad" text books, the ones that make you drop the course, but this one beats them all. The content is unnecessarily long and covers the material only superficially. The analogies are tiring and the comments and prose make you want to throw the book straight into the trash can.
Its OK as an introduction to the subject for someone who just wants to know how networking and internet works, but as a text it is simply a waste of time (and credit).

this book is an exciting introduction to computer networks. the authors focus on the concepts and use many analogies which really help to understand the key ideas. the presentation of the material in a top down approach is quite interesting because it exposes the readers to familiar applications before delving into the knots and bolts of how the network and mac layers work.

You will get very and I repeat VERY BORED with this book , like the previous review said the information covered in this book is very little and its only useful if you are a complete idiot. Also the problems at the end of chapter do not reflect the material covered.

Please if you can avoid using this book do it for the good of your students.

Most boring , expensive and useless book I have bought.

(I would like to give 0 stars but is not possible).

I have seen an earlier edition of this book and was hoping this newer one would be better.

The author concentrates way too much on analogies for describing something, and you have to spent countless hours reading a bunch of stuff for very little information. Maybe if you are a complete idiot this might be helpful, but not otherwise.

Next the questions at the end of the chapters are somewhat hard, but the text in general does not give a way to answer most all that have to deal with any type of calculation. Some of the slides that the instructor shows help to cover information for the questions, but that is a terrible organization for training material. Slides should simply be an overview of main points, and not the way to answer more difficult questions.

For the author: A good analogy of the above circumstance is that the chapters talk about bubble gum, while the questions in the back cover rocket science.

I wish our campus would tell professors they can't use this book. There are much better ones out there. I would give names but I don't believe in doing that on a review.