[.ca] OSPF Network Design Solutions (ISBN 1587050323)

From Amazon.com:
Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) guru Thomas M. Thomas II strikes again with his OSPF Network Design Solutions. This book's three sections--"Contemporary Intranets," "OSPF Routing & Network Design," and "OSPF Implementation, Troubleshooting, & Management"--amply cover any OSPF base you can imagine. In addition, each chapter ends with at least one case study and a list of FAQs--a particularly nice touch. Always careful to lay the proper groundwork, Thomas first covers networking foundations, including relatively recent developments such as intranets. From there he launches into an explanation of not only routing protocol fundamentals but also methods that will enable you to determine which protocols are appropriate for your particular environment. If at that point you have discerned that OSPF is indeed what you need, you can march on to the second and third sections, which hone in on implementation specifics. The second section opens with a chapter dedicated to OSPF, complete with the protocol's history and Request for Comments (RFC). The remaining pages are taken up by configuration commands and tips. The last part of the book is reserved for highly advanced topics, including network design, security, and management. Though definitely aimed at those well versed in basic networking, OSPF Network Design Solution has the flexibility to grow with you as your level of OSPF knowledge and familiarity increase.--Sarah L. Roberts-Witt

practical and more:
This book can do a lot for you if you have your OSPF concepts straightened out esp if you have read the anatomy book by Moy. This book actually covers all the cisco implementation details of OSPF and talks about practical real world scenarios. It has some really cool case studies in which you have to design an OSPF network to connect several remote locations with the campus network. In fact, you can download that chapter from cisco's website. I didn't read this book from cover to cover but use it as a reference to figure out OSPF related issues. For instance if you want to see how the 'designated router other' selection works in cisco, you can easily look up in this book. It has good explanation of all OSPF parameters that cisco has implemented in the IOS and the examples show the actual configuration as well. You'd have guessed already, but it covers in detail the implementation of OSPF areas, NSSA, stub area, virtual links, IGP interaction and interface related parameters etc. One of the reviewers who recommends TCP/IP vol 1 instead of this book is obviously comparing apple with an orange! Comer's book is classic and a must read for all networking folks but its targeted towards TCP/IP suite of protcols and not specifically towards routing protocols.

This is Hog Wash:
My attention was first brough to this title becasue I had once taken a class with the author. Surprised that he had written a book I checked out the book in the local book store and found the book discombobulated and full of mistakes. I proceeded to read some of the reviews on the book and a number of the reviews confirmed my initial suspicions. However, I noticed a very peculiar situation recently when I happened across the reviews again on Amazon.com. This book has 12 of 19 ratings of 5 stars (and 2 ratings of 4 stars) and three people who have rated the book 1 star. I have never run across reviews in such contradiction to each other. Although I have only spent an hour or two looking over the book it is clear this title is at best average. It confounds me how anyone in their right mind could rate this book greater than 3 stars, unless however they were a cohort of the author! The only reason I rated this book three stars was not to intentionally bias the rating of the book with out having made a thorough examination.

It's a good 10,000 foot view book but lacks meat at times:
I revisited this book the other day. It's not bad, but it doesn't have any concrete examples that can help set the concepts in concrete. Originally, I had a scathing review, but after reviewing the book again, I might have over reacted.

Good content, but rife with errors.:
Oddly enough, I like this book. Odd because, usually, when a book is so poorly edited and contains so many contradictions and errors, I just plain don't like it. Even though I do like it, I don't trust it completely. I purchased it orginally as a reference about eight months ago and only recently set out to read it carefully from cover to cover. When I did, I discovered that quite often, the text and accompanying diagrams disagree. Values listed in tables for IP address ranges in A, B, C, D and E class networks disagree with the authors text. At one point, the author references a table showing differences between feature-set differences between RIP, IS-IS and OSPF. When I looked at the table, I discovered that every entry in the table said "Yes," indicating that there were *no* differences. Why include the table? A diagram intended to show a chronological sequence of events has no sequencing information whatsoever. In fact, the diagram added nothing of value to the discussion. Besides disagreements between text and accompanying tables and and diagrams, there are many errors of grammar that confuse the points the author is trying to make, to the degree that I wasn't able to understand what I'd just read, re-read and read yet again. At one point, I stoped reading in disbelief that any editor could have allowed this book into print. I checked the flyleaf and found no fewer than eleven editors listed. Amazing. Eleven people listed as various kinds of editors and not one of them caught the errors. This book reads fairly well; I've learned quite a bit from the author so far (I'm only into chapter four) and, oddly enough, I'm enjoying it in spite of the problems. However, I have to say this looks far more like a rough draft... I'd strongly recommend that anyone learning OSPF from this book study other works carefully. I can learn from this book, but the number of errors I've found in the first four chapters makes me feel certain that, somewhere, the author has made mistakes that I won't be able to catch. That means I won't be able to trust completely what I've learned from his writing. Overall, I'm quite disappointed. I rated two stars instead of one star only because of the content and organization, which I find good, even though rife with errors.

Decent coverage of OSPF design issues, but poor quality:
I have to agree with another reviewer - I don't see how anyone can rate this book so highly. True, I haven't yet made it all the way through the book, but already I have many, many errors. Most of the errors that I have seen so far are relatively easy to decipher, but then perhaps there are many more errors that I'm not catching because I'm not knowledgeable enough with OSPF yet. I'm giving the book an avg rating because it does seem to give a good treatment of design issues, but there are just too many mistakes. This book would probably be MUCH better in a second edition.