Customer Rating:  
Summary: Don't waste your money
Comment: This book has lots of nice pictures.. but for learning home networking it is juvenile and lacks depth of explanation across multiple network routers, connection nodes, and how-tos. Don't waste your money.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An Expanded Linksys Manual
Comment: This would be an excellent getting started guide if it was included with a Linksys product, but it is disappointing as a separate purchase. Most of the step-by-step instructions presume that you have purchased a Linksys product. If you use another brand, this book may not give you much help. Even if you have a Linksys product, don't expect much coverage of intermediate or advanced topics. For instance, the book mentions remotely controlling a network computer, but it doesn't explain how to do it other than to briefly mention a few programs. I was expecting a little better coverage based on the previous reviews.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Nice Intro to Home Networking
Comment: This was a helpful and easy to understand guide book to home networking. I'm sure I'll reuse it as a reference guide for future networking projects. It covers the basics and provides detailed illustration for windows based wireless and ethernet networks. You'll learn about choosing the right network for you, what hardware options to buy, installation, setup, security, sharing.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Dummies Guide from Cisco with Linksys Plugs
Comment: Not that many years ago, many people felt they needed either a technician or a 12-year-old to install and set-up a PC. Many homes now are starting to have more than one PC. Yet broadband connections and high quality printers are expensive if you buy one for each PC. How can those costs be reduced? Add a home network.
Before you faint with anxiety, look at this very simple book. It will guide you through the few technical questions you need to address and give you complete and simple directions you can easily follow (but feel free to recruit a 12-year-old to help you).
Before you are done reading, you will also realize that you may also benefit from being able to put noisy printers in quiet places, eliminate cables, and do lots of neat applications (like visually monitor your children's rooms and front door) with your network.
If you are like me, you've heard that wireless networks can easily be hacked into. This book tells you how to address those very real security problems.
As I stand on the brink of our first home network, I am clutching this book in both hands . . . and am ready to launch myself into familial shared cyberspace saying, "I think I can do it. I think I can do it. I think I can do it." And I know you can!
The only annoying quality about this book comes from the many plugs for Linksys products. But that's better than not having photographs and examples, so I bore with it.
This book is not only simple; you can read it very quickly.
It could have been greatly improved though by concentrating the material throughout around whether you want a wired or wireless network after providing an initial chapter that helped you choose one or the other. Now, you have to slog through every page to find all the information you need for one or the other. Perhaps in a future edition, this book will be updated to deal with that problem.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great little book for home networkers...
Comment: I have read many of Mr. Underdahl's technical books over the years. I was in the bookstore recently and saw this on the shelf... I work in the IT arena and am always looking for books for my clients that can provide walkthroughs in a simple and clear, but competent, delivery. This is one of them. Sat down and read about half of it in the store and was very impressed. Definitely not for an advanced IT person or someone who wants heavy nuts-and-bolts type info, but for the 99.9% of the population that wants to get that home network up and running and also learn how to strengthen it and make it better and more useful (say, home office users), this is a great start.
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