Computer Networks 4th Ed Andrew S. Tanenbaum [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

9.1.1 Introduction and General Works

Bi et al., "Wireless Mobile Communications at the Start of the 21st Century"

A new century, a new technology. Sounds good. After some history of wireless, the major topics are covered here, including standards, applications, Internet, and technologies.

Comer, The Internet Book

Anyone looking for an easy-going introduction to the Internet should look here. Comer describes the history, growth, technology, protocols, and services of the Internet in terms that novices can understand, but so much material is covered that the book is also of interest to more technical readers.

Garber, "Will 3G Really Be the Next Big Wireless Technology?"

Third-generation mobile phones are supposed to combine voice and data and provide data rates up to 2 Mbps. They have been slow to take off. The promises, pitfalls, technology, politics, and economics of using broadband wireless communication are all covered in this easy-to-read article.

IEEE Internet Computing, Jan.-Feb. 2000

The first issue of IEEE Internet Computing in the new millennium did exactly what you would expect: ask the people who helped create the Internet in the previous millennium to speculate on where it is going in the next one. The experts are Paul Baran, Lawrence Roberts, Leonard Kleinrock, Stephen Crocker, Danny Cohen, Bob Metcalfe, Bill Gates, Bill Joy, and others. For best results, wait 500 years, then read their predictions.

Kipnis, "Beating the System: Abuses of the Standards Adoption Process"

Standards committees try to be fair and vendor neutral in their work, but unfortunately there are companies that try to abuse the system. For example, it has happened repeatedly that a company helps develop a standard and after it is approved, announces that the standard is based on a patent it owns and which it will license to companies that it likes and not to companies that it does not like, and at prices that it alone determines. For a look at the dark side of standardization, this article is an excellent start.

Kyas and Crawford, ATM Networks

ATM was once touted as the networking protocol of the future, and is still important within the telephone system. This book is an up-to-date guide to ATM's current status, with detailed information on ATM protocols and how they can integrate with IP-based networks.

Kwok, "A Vision for Residential Broadband Service"

If you want to know what Microsoft thought about delivering video on demand in 1995, read this article. Five years later the vision was hopelessly obsolete. The value of the article is to demonstrate that even highly-knowledgeable and well-motivated people cannot see even five years into the future with any accuracy at all. It should be a lesson for all of us.

Naughton, A Brief History of the Future

Who invented the Internet, anyway? Many people have claimed credit. And rightly so, since many people had a hand in it, in different ways. This history of the Internet tells how it all happened, and in a witty and charming way, replete with anecdotes, such as AT&T's repeatedly making clear its belief that digital communication had no future.

Perkins, "Mobile Networking in the Internet"

For a good overview of mobile networking protocol layer by protocol layer, this is the place to look. The physical through transport layers are covered, as well as middleware, security, and ad hoc networking.

Teger and Waks,"End-User Perspectives on Home Networking"

Home networks are not like corporate networks. The applications are different (more multimedia intensive), the equipment comes from a wider range of suppliers, and the users have little technical training and no patience whatsoever for any failures. To find out more, look here.

Varshney and Vetter, "Emerging Mobile and Wireless Networks"

Another introduction to wireless communication. It covers wireless LANs, wireless local loops, and satellites, as well as some of the software and applications.

Wetteroth, OSI Reference Model for Telecommunications

Though the OSI protocols themselves are not used any more, the seven-layer model has become very well-known. As well as explaining more about OSI, this book applies the model to telecom (as opposed to computer) networks, showing where common telephony and other voice protocols fit into the networking stack.

9.1.2 The Physical Layer

Abramson, "Internet Access Using VSATs"

Small earth stations are becoming more popular for both rural telephony and corporate Internet access in developed countries. However, the nature of the traffic for these two cases differs dramatically, so different protocols are needed to handle the two cases. In this article, the inventor of the ALOHA system discusses numerous channel allocation methods that can be used for VSAT systems.

Alkhatib et al., "Wireless Data Networks: Reaching the Extra Mile"

For a quick introduction to wireless networking terms and technologies, including spread spectrum, this tutorial paper is a good starting place.

Azzam and Ransom, Broadband Access Technologies

The telephone system, fiber, ADSL, cable networks, satellites, even power lines are covered here as network access technologies. Other topics include home networks, services, network performance, and standards. The book concludes with biographies of the major companies in the telecom and network business, but with the rate of change in the industry, this chapter may have a shorter shelf life than the technology chapters.

Bellamy, Digital Telephony

Everything you ever wanted to know about the telephone system and more is contained in this authoritative book. Particularly interesting are the chapters on transmission and multiplexing, digital switching, fiber optics, mobile telephony, and DSL.

Berezdivin et al., "Next-Generation Wireless Communications Concepts and Technologies"

These folks are one step ahead of everyone else. The "next generation" in the title refers to fourth-generation wireless networks. These networks are expected to provide IP service everywhere with seamless connectivity to the Internet with high bandwidth and excellent quality of service. These goals are to be achieved through smart spectrum usage, dynamic resource management, and adaptive service. All this sounds visionary now, but mobile telephones sounded pretty visionary back in 1995.

Dutta-Roy, "An Overview of Cable Modem Technology and Market Perspectives"

Cable TV has gone from simple CATV to a complex distribution system for TV, Internet, and telephony. These changes have affected the cable infrastructure considerably. For a discussion of cable plant, standards, and marketing, with an emphasis on DOCSIS, this article is worth reading.

Farserotu and Prasad, "A Survey of Future Broadband Multimedia Satellite Systems, Issues, and Trends"

A variety of data communication satellites are in the sky or on the drawing board, including Astrolink, Cyberstar, Spaceway, Skybridge, Teledesic, and iSky. They use various techniques including bent pipe and satellite switching. For an overview of different satellite systems and techniques, this paper is a good starting place.

Hu and Li, "Satellite-Based Internet: A Tutorial"

Internet access via satellite is different from access via terrestrial lines. Not only is there the issue of delay, but routing and switching are also different. In this paper, the authors examine some of the issues related to using satellites for Internet access.

Joel, "Telecommunications and the IEEE Communications Society"

For a compact, but surprisingly comprehensive, history of telecommunications, starting with the telegraph and ending with 802.11, this article is the place to look. It also covers radio, telephones, analog and digital switching, submarine cables, digital transmission, ATM, television broadcasting, satellites, cable TV, optical communications, mobile phones, packet switching, the ARPANET, and the Internet.

Metcalfe, "Computer/Network Interface Design: Lessons from Arpanet & Ethernet"

Although engineers have been building network interfaces for decades now, one often wonders if they have learned anything from all this experience. In this paper, the designer of the Ethernet tells how to build a network interface and what to do with it once you have built it. He pulls no punches, telling what he did wrong as well as what he did right.

Palais, Fiber Optic Communication, 3rd ed.

Books on fiber optic technology tend to be aimed at the specialist, but this one is more accessible than most. It covers waveguides, light sources, light detectors, couplers, modulation, noise, and many other topics.

Pandya, "Emerging Mobile and Personal Communications Systems"

For a short and sweet introduction to hand-held personal communication systems, this article is worth looking at. One of the nine pages contains a list of 70 acronyms used on the other eight pages.

Sarikaya, "Packet Mode in Wireless Networks: Overview of Transition to Third Generation"

The whole idea of third-generation cellular networks is wireless data transmission. To get an overview of how second-generation networks handle data and what the evolution to third generation will be, this is a good place to look. Topics covered include GPRS, IS-95B, WCDMA, and CDMA2000.

9.1.3 The Data Link Layer

Carlson, PPP Design, Implementation and Debugging, 2nd ed.

If you are interested in detailed information on all the protocols that make up the PPP suite, including CCP (compression) and ECP (encryption), this book is a good reference. There is a particular focus on ANU PPP-2.3, a popular implementation of PPP.

Gravano, Introduction to Error Control Codes

Errors creep into nearly all digital communications, and many types of codes have been developed to detect and correct for them. This book explains some of the most important, from simple linear Hamming codes to more complex Galois fields and convolutional codes. It tries to do so with the minimum algebra necessary, but that is still a lot.

Holzmann, Design and Validation of Computer Protocols

Readers interested in the more formal aspects of data link (and similar) protocols should look here. The specification, modeling, correctness, and testing of such protocols are all covered in this book.

Peterson and Davie, Computer Networks: A Systems Approach

Chapter 2 contains material about many data link issues, including framing, error detection, stop-and-wait protocols, sliding window protocols, and IEEE 802 LANs.

Stallings, Data and Computer Communications

Chapter 7 deals with the data link layer and covers flow control, error detection, and the basic data link protocols, including stop-and-wait and go back n. The HDLC-type protocols are also covered.

9.1.4 The Medium Access Control Sublayer

Bhagwat, "Bluetooth: Technology for Short-Range Wireless Apps"

For a straightforward introduction to the Bluetooth system, this is a good place to start. The core protocols and profiles, radio, piconets, and links are discussed, followed by an introduction to the various protocols.

Bisdikian, "An Overview of the Bluetooth Wireless Technology"

Like the Bhagwat paper (above), this is also a good starting point for learning more about the Bluetooth system. The piconets, the protocol stack, and the profiles are all discussed, among other topics.

Crow et al., "IEEE 802.11 Wireless Local Area Networks"

For a simple introduction to the technology and protocols of 802.11, this is a good place to start. The emphasis is on the MAC sublayer. Both distributed control and centralized control are covered. The paper concludes with some simulation studies of the performance of 802.11 under various conditions.

Eklund et al., "IEEE Standard 802.16: A Technical Overview of the Wireless MAN Air Interface for Broadband Wireless Access"

The wireless local loop standardized by IEEE in 2002 as 802.16 may revolutionize telephone service, bringing broadband to the home. In this overview, the authors explain the main technological issues relating to this standard.

Kapp, "802.11: Leaving the Wire Behind"

This short introduction to 802.11 covers the basics, protocols, and relevant standards.

Kleinrock, "On Some Principles of Nomadic Computing and Multi-Access Communications"

Wireless access over a shared channel is more complex than having wired stations share a channel. Among other issues are dynamic topologies, routing, and power management. These and other issues related to channel access by mobile wireless devices are covered in this article.

Miller and Cummins, LAN Technologies Explained

Need to know more about the technologies that can be used in a LAN? This book covers most of them, including FDDI and token ring as well as the everpopular Ethernet. While new installations of the first two are now rare, many existing networks still use them, and ring networks are still common (e.g., SONET).

Perlman, Interconnections, 2nd ed.

For an authoritative, but entertaining, treatment of bridges, routers, and routing in general, Perlman's book is the place to look. The author designed the algorithms used in the IEEE 802 spanning tree bridge and is one of the world's leading authorities on various aspects of networking.

Webb, "Broadband Fixed Wireless Access"

Both the "why" and the "how" of fixed broadband wireless are examined in this paper. The "why" section argues that people do not want a home e-mail address, a work e-mail address, separate telephone numbers for home, work, and mobile, an instant messaging account, and perhaps a fax number or two. They want a single integrated system that works everywhere. The emphasis in the technology section is on the physical layer, including topics such as TDD versus FDD, adaptive versus fixed modulation, and number of carriers.

9.1.5 The Network Layer

Bhatti and Crowcroft, "QoS Sensitive Flows: Issues in IP Packet Handling"

One of the ways to achieve better quality of service in a network is to schedule packet departures from each router carefully. In this paper, a variety of packet scheduling algorithms, as well as related issues, are discussed in some detail.

Chakrabarti, "QoS Issues in Ad Hoc Wireless Networks"

Routing in ad hoc networks of notebook computers that just happen to be near each other is hard enough without having to worry about quality of service as well. Nevertheless, people do care about quality of service, so attention needs to be paid to this topic. The nature of ad hoc networks and some of the issues related to routing and quality of service are discussed in this article.

Comer, Internetworking with TCP/IP, Vol. 1, 4th ed.

Comer has written the definitive work on the TCP/IP protocol suite. Chapters 4 through 11 deal with IP and related protocols in the network layer. The other chapters deal primarily with the higher layers and are also worth reading.

Huitema, Routing in the Internet

If you want to know everything there is to know about routing in the Internet, this is the book for you. Both pronounceable algorithms (e.g., RIP, CIDR, and MBONE) and unpronounceable algorithms (e.g., OSPF, IGRP, EGP, and BGP) are treated in great detail. New features, such as multicast, mobile IP, and resource reservation, are also here.

Malhotra, IP Routing

For a detailed guide to IP routing, this book contains a lot of material. The protocols covered include RIP, RIP-2, IGRP, EIGRP, OSPF, and BGP-4.

Metz, "Differentiated Services"

Quality-of-service guarantees are important for many multimedia applications. Integrated services and differentiated services are two possible approaches to achieving them. Both are discussed here, with the emphasis on differentiated services.

Metz, "IP Routers: New Tool for Gigabit Networking"

Most of the other references for Chap. 5 are about routing algorithms. This one is different: it is about how routers actually work. They have gone through an evolutionary process from being general-purpose workstations to being highly special-purpose routing machines. If you want to know more, this article is a good starting place.

Nemeth et al., UNIX System Administration Handbook

For a change of pace, Chap. 13 of this book deals with networking in a more practical way than most of our other references. Rather than just dealing with the abstract concepts, it gives much advice here about what to do if you are actually managing a real network.

Perkins, "Mobile Networking through Mobile IP"

As mobile computing devices become more and more common, Mobile IP is becoming more and more important. This tutorial gives a good introduction to it and related topics.

Perlman, Interconnections: Bridges and Routers, 2nd ed.

In Chapters 12 through 15, Perlman describes many of the issues involved in unicast and multicast routing algorithm design, both for WANs and networks of LANs, and their implementation in various protocols. But the best part of the book is Chap. 18, in which the author distills her years of experience about network protocols into an informative and fun chapter.

Puzmanova, Routing and Switching: Time of Convergence?

In the late 1990s, some networking equipment vendors began to call everything a switch, while many managers of large networks said that they were switching from routers to switches. As the title implies, this book predicts the future of both routers and switches and asks whether they really are converging.

Royer and Toh, "A Review of Current Routing Protocols for Ad-Hoc Mobile Wireless Networks"

The AODV ad hoc routing algorithm that we discussed in Chap. 5 is not the only one known. A variety of other ones, including DSDV, CGSR, WRP, DSR, TORA, ABR, DRP, and SRP, are discussed here and compared with one another. Clearly, if you are planning to invent a new ad hoc routing protocol, step 1 is to think of a three- or four-letter acronym.

Stevens, TCP/IP Illustrated, Vol. 1

Chapters 3-10 provide a comprehensive treatment of IP and related protocols (ARP, RARP, and ICMP) illustrated by examples.

Striegel and Manimaran, "A Survey of QoS Multicasting Issues"

Multicasting and quality of service are two increasing important topics as services such as internet radio and television begin to take off. In this survey paper, the authors discuss how routing algorithms can take both of these issues into account.

Yang and Reddy, "A Taxonomy for Congestion Control Algorithms in Packet Switching Networks"

The authors have devised a taxonomy for congestion control algorithms. The main categories are open loop with source control, open loop with destination control, closed loop with explicit feedback, and closed loop with implicit feedback. They use this taxonomy to describe and classify 23 existing algorithms.

9.1.6 The Transport Layer

Comer, Internetworking with TCP/IP, Vol. 1, 4th ed.

As mentioned above, Comer has written the definitive work on the TCP/IP protocol suite. Chap. 12 is about UDP; Chap. 13 is about TCP.

Hall and Cerf, Internet Core Protocols: The Definitive Guide

If you like your information straight from the source, this is the place to learn more about TCP. After all, Cerf co-invented it. Chapter 7 is a good reference on TCP, showing how to interpret the information supplied by protocol analysis and network management tools. Other chapters cover UDP, IGMP, ICMP and ARP.

Kurose and Ross, Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach Featuring the Internet

Chapter 3 is about the transport layer and contains a fair amount of material on UDP and TCP. It also discusses the stop-and-wait and go back n protocols we examined in Chap. 3.

Mogul, "IP Network Performance"

Despite the title of this article, it is at least, if not more, about TCP and network performance in general, than about IP performance in particular. It is full of useful guidelines and rules of thumb.

Peterson and Davie, Computer Networks: A Systems Approach

Chapter 5 is about UDP, TCP, and a few related protocols. Network performance is also covered briefly.

Stevens, TCP/IP Illustrated, Vol. 1

Chapters 17-24 provide a comprehensive treatment of TCP illustrated by examples.

9.1.7 The Application Layer

Bergholz, "Extending Your Markup: An XML Tutorial"

A short and straightforward introduction to XML for beginners.

Cardellini et al., The State-of-the-Art in Locally Distributed Web-Server Systems"

As the Web gets more popular, some Web sites need to have large server farms to handle the traffic. The hard part of building a server farm is distributing the load among the machines. This tutorial paper discusses that subject at great length.

Berners-Lee et al., "The World Wide Web"

A perspective on the Web and where it is going by the person who invented it and some of his colleagues at CERN. The article focuses on the Web architecture, URLs, HTTP, and HTML, as well as future directions, and compares it to other distributed information systems.

Choudbury et al., "Copyright Protection for Electronic Publishing on Computer Networks"

Although numerous books and articles describe cryptographic algorithms, few describe how they could be used to prevent users from further distributing documents that they are allowed to decrypt. This paper describes a variety of mechanisms that might help protect authors' copyrights in the electronic era.

Collins, "Carrier Grade Voice over IP"

If you have read the Varshney et al. paper and now want to know all the details about voice over IP using H.323, this is a good place to look. Although the book is long and detailed, it is tutorial in nature and does not require any previous knowledge of telephone engineering.

Davison, "A Web Caching Primer"

As the Web grows, caching is becoming crucial to good performance. For a brief introduction to Web caching, this is a good place to look.

Krishnamurthy and Rexford, Web Protocols and Practice

It would be hard to find a more comprehensive book about all aspects of the Web than this one. It covers clients, servers, proxies, and caching, as you might expect. But there are also chapters on Web traffic and measurements as well as chapters on current research and improving the Web.

Rabinovich and Spatscheck, Web Caching and Replication

For a comprehensive treatment of Web caching and replication, this is a good bet. Proxies, caches, prefetching, content delivery networks, server selection, and much more are covered in great detail.

Shahabi et al. "Yima: A Second-Generation Continuous Media Server"

Multimedia servers are complex systems that have to manage CPU scheduling, disk file placement, stream synchronization and more. As time has gone on, people have learned how to design them better. An architectural overview of one recent system is presented in this paper.

Tittel et al., Mastering XHTML

Two books in one large volume, covering the Web's new standard markup language. First, there's a text describing XHTML, focusing mostly on how it differs from regular HTML. Then there is a comprehensive reference guide to the tags, codes, and special characters used in XHTML 1.0.

Varshney et al., "Voice over IP"

How does voice over IP work and is it going to replace the public switched telephone network? Read and find out.

9.1.8 Network Security

Anderson, "Why Cryptosystems Fail"

According to Anderson, security in banking systems is poor, but not due to clever intruders breaking DES on their PCs. The real problems range from dishonest employees (a bank clerk's changing a customer's mailing address to his own to intercept the bank card and PIN number) to programming errors (giving all customers the same PIN code). What is especially interesting is the arrogant response banks give when confronted with a clear problem: "Our systems are perfect and therefore all errors must be due to customer errors or fraud."

Anderson, Security Engineering

To some extent, this book is a 600-page version of "Why Cryptosystems Fail." It is more technical than Secrets and Lies but less technical than Network Security (see below). After an introduction to the basic security techniques, entire chapters are devoted to various applications, including banking, nuclear command and control, security printing, biometrics, physical security, electronic warfare, telecom security, e-commerce, and copyright protection. The third part of the book is about policy, management, and system evaluation.

Artz, "Digital Steganography"

Steganography goes back to ancient Greece, where the wax was melted off blank tablets so secret messages could be applied to the underlying wood before the wax was reapplied. Nowadays different techniques are used, but the goal is the same. Various modern techniques for hiding information in images, audio, and other carriers are discussed here.

Brands, Rethinking Public Key Infrastructures and Digital Certificates

More than a wide-ranging introduction to digital certificates, this is also a powerful work of advocacy. The author believes that current paper-based systems of identity verification are outdated and inefficient, and argues that digital certificates can be used for applications such as electronic voting, digital rights management and even as a replacement for cash. He also warns that without PKI and encryption, the Internet could become a large-scale surveillance tool.

Kaufman et al., Network Security, 2nd ed.

This authoritative and witty book is the first place to look for more technical information on network security algorithms and protocols. Secret and public key algorithms and protocols, message hashes, authentication, Kerberos, PKI, IPsec, SSL/TLS, and e-mail security are all explained carefully and at considerable length, with many examples. Chapter 26 on security folklore is a real gem. In security, the devil is in the details. Anyone planning to design a security system that will actually be used will learn a lot from the real-world advice in this chapter.

Pohlmann, Firewall Systems

Firewalls are most networks' first (and last) line of defense against attackers. This book explains how they work and what they do, from the simplest softwarebased firewall designed to protect a single PC to the advanced firewall appliances that sit between a private network and its Internet connection.

Schneier, Applied Cryptography, 2nd ed.

This monumental compendium is NSA's worst nightmare: a single book that describes every known cryptographic algorithm. To make it worse (or better, depending on your point of view), the book contains most of the algorithms as runnable programs (in C). Furthermore, over 1600 references to the cryptographic literature are provided. This book is not for beginners, but if you really want to keep your files secret, read this book.

Schneier, Secrets and Lies

If you read Applied Cryptography from cover to cover, you will know everything there is to know about cryptographic algorithms. If you then read Secrets and Lies cover to cover (which can be done in a lot less time), you will learn that cryptographic algorithms are not the whole story. Most security weaknesses are not due to faulty algorithms or even keys that are too short, but to flaws in the security environment. Endless examples are presented about threats, attacks, defenses, counterattacks, and much more. For a nontechnical and fascinating discussion of computer security in the broadest sense, this book is the one to read.

Skoudis, Counter Hack

The best way to stop a hacker is to think like a hacker. This book shows how hackers see a network, and argues that security should be a function of the entire network's design, not an afterthought based on one specific technology. It covers almost all common attacks, including the "social engineering" types that take advantage of users who are not always familiar with computer security measures.