The book begins in Chapter 1, by discussing the most important question of all: why build a network in the first place? The answers to this question shape everything that follows. This first chapter also reviews several of the basic networking concepts used throughout the book.
Chapter 2, discusses reliability in networks, the factors that lead to a solid network. This includes discussion of how to find the single points of failure in your network. It also includes an important section on how to evaluate the stability of your network and its components statistically.
Chapter 3, describes many of the most successful design types and their strengths and weaknesses. This chapter should help you to decide on the large-scale shape of the network you build. It includes many ideas for ensuring both reliability and scalability in a large-scale network.
Chapter 4, delves into the technologies commonly used on LANs. This is intended as a guide to the network designer and implementer, rather than the engineer building the hardware. There are many other books that provide that higher level of detail, which is beyond the scope of this book. The intent here is to provide the information that a network designer needs to make appropriate decisions.
The same is true of Chapter 5, which begins a three-chapter discussion of the various Layer 3 and 4 protocols that are commonly used on LANs, focusing in particular on TCP/IP (see Chapter 6) and IPX (see Chapter 7 ). At the same time, these chapters look at good ways of implementing networks based on these protocols, as well as appropriate dynamic routing protocols.
Then in Chapter 8, I turn to efficiency. What is meant by efficiency in a network? How it is it achieved? In particular, I discuss how to implement Quality of Service (QoS) through a network to ensure that low-priority traffic doesn't interfere with the delivery of important data.
Chapter 9, is devoted to network management. But, rather than looking at how to manage a network, this section focuses on how a network's design can make it either easier or more difficult to manage. There are several key design decisions that have implications on how the network will later be managed. Since manageability is one of the keys to reliability, it is important to design networks so that they can be managed effectively.
Chapter 10, discusses other important considerations that may not be relevant to every network. These include issues of LAN security, designing for multicast capabilities, and inclusion of the new IPv6 protocol.
Appendix A describes in some mathematical detail how to combine statistical probabilities. This is important for estimating failure rates in a complex network. This information is particularly used in Chapter 2 in Section 2.2.7.1.
The Glossary is a listing of networking terms. Networking has unfortunately become bogged down with highly technical jargon that often makes it difficult to understand things that are actually relatively simple. So this glossary is included to help prevent that from being a problem.