Customer Rating: 
Summary: Make peace with TCP/IP
Comment: The explanations are well structured. Brings you to a knowledge of tcp/ip from 0 to 90 % in a very pleasant and jiffy way
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Not useful
Comment: This book does not deliver on it's cover title. I bought this text thinking it will help me learn the basic working details of TCP/IP. I was totally dissappionted.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Nuts and bolts of the Internet
Comment: I would agree with some of the reviewers, and say that it is wrongly titled as "TCP/IP for Dummies", in fact I was suprised by their title and what I actually read. However, I enjoyed the book because I had also an interest in the workings of the Internet. The authors state in the intro that "The thing about the TCP/IP communcations protcol is that it's fundamentally tied in with networking...So, we've included a bit about networks and The Internet..." So it did not delve into great details of TCP/IP, but then again it is an very introductory text. So it worked well in just the right amount of TCP/IP detail with a great thorough introduction to The Internet technology.As to the accuracy of some statements, I don't know because I am not an expert. However, the writers are not dummies, in fact, when someone can take a difficult and complex subject, and bring it down to a layperson's understanding it often is a sign that they really understand what they are talking about. Furthermore, this is an excellent introduction to the workings of the Internet. I had a very incomplete understanding of the hardware/software of the internet, it helped me greatly to better understand many of the terms that I've heard discussed in techie circles. True, the dinner plate allegory did not help at all, but when they discussed matters in a more simple technical way, it was great. I give it a **** four-star because although the organization may not have been perfect and the title is slightly misleading, it still did an excellent job of explaining the internet software/hardware in a thorough fashion.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Book that will satisfy no one
Comment: I was looking for a book that explained the nuts and bolts of TCP/IP. Instead the book dedicates six chapters or so to TCP/IP. The rest of it is a superficial treatment that a new computer user might find useful, but that contains little material for the intermediate user (and only intermediate users, not beginners, would even know what TCP/IP is, much less want to read a book titled "TCP/IP for Dummies.")For example, page 197 lists plug-ins for Web browsers, such as Shockwave, Flash, and RealOne Player. Useful for a rank beginner, but not for an intermediate user wanting to learn about TCP/IP. Page 188 explains how to "understand URLs," giving the example of http://www.ibm.com. Again, not very useful for the intermediate user. Meanwhile, there are some TCP/IP basics that are never explained. Ports are not explained very well, and ICMP receives barely a mention. (However, page 64 tells me to "see RFCs 1256 and 2463 for more information on ICMP. This is not at all helpful.) Some of the information is dated or, worse, just plain wrong. One passage suggests that gigabit Ethernet hardware costs a fortune, which is no longer true. Page 298 states that NetBIOS is a "Windows proprietary protocol." It is not; IBM originally developed NetBIOS. Overall, the first few chapters of this book are much too technical for new Internet users, but barely meaty enough for someone who wants to understand TCP/IP in depth. All the remaining chapters are fine for new Internet users, but mere filler for anyone experienced enough to understand what a URL is. This confused mishmash of a book will satisfy no one.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Great intro to the subject
Comment: I had heard that previous versions were so-so, but this edition had everything a non-expert would need to understand the basics of the TCP/IP protocal. It easily explained the differnce between IMAP and POP3; how FTP works; HTML vs XML; and the section on security (SSL, SSH, etc.) was excellent, as was the hardware section.It truly is dummied down, and don't rely on it if you really want to configure telnet in a linux environment, but for basics it's excellent.
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