On Tue, 22 May 2001, Jose Nazario wrote:
> actually, this raises a pretty steep question for me:
>
> i love my TCP/IP illustrated. its superb, clean, efficient .. but
> outdated. since its publication, a host of specific applications have
> really taken the limelight, and bring new protocol concerns and
> particulars, not to mention security issues (which can be addressed after
> a thorough understanding of the protocol).
I don't think it's really that outdated, the examples may be dated, but
the stack issues are pretty consistant. Volume 3 tried to cover more
leading-edge stuff, and if you don't spend time on the non-runners like
TTCP it's worth having on the shelf.
> is there any text, any tome, even a series, that is as clean and
> authoritative as stevens' series? i mean, the RFCs are great, but
> sometimes dense and obtuse ... stevens had a way of cutting right to what
> was important.
Nobody writes like he wrote. Comer's books are as authoritative- if not
more so, but I think are more "typical" what's the norm for protocols.
I've always considered the "Illustrated" part to be more of how Stevens
worded things than anything.
I'm not sure what the last revision date was for the Comer series, and you
have to watch the "streams versus sockets" fork in the titles, but absent
Stevens they'd be great books- compared to Stevens though, I find them too
dry and not as inspring. Many people prefer them though, so it's probably
more a matter of taste for a particular writing style than anything.
I keep Stevens and Comer on my shelf, Stevens just tends to be my favorite
of the two series.
I'd *highly* recommend that anyone who wants to understand things at a
deeper level go fork over the bucks for Stevens' "Advanced Programming in
a Unix Environment"- Anyone who gets even half-way through that tome
learns a lot. In fact, I've yet to pick up a Stevens book where I didn't
learn something significant- the Unix Network Programming series is good
too.
Take a look at the Comer books though, they're a solid body of work.
Paul
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