Book Reviews

Know What You're Getting Into

Offering more than just design basics, this book delves into the management of large-scale LANs.

• By Brian Marranzini
• 10/01/2002

Everyone talks about how important the idea of planning and process is, yet few people seem to really follow this edict. If you're looking for a comprehensive book about designing and managing a large-scale local area network, this book is for you. While it doesn't cover wide area network technologies in depth, the differences between the two are getting smaller by the day with the growing installation base of fiber loops providing LAN-like speeds over greater distances. The title of the book suggests that it's purely about designing a large-scale LAN, but the topics go more in depth about managing such a network, as you can't design something when you don't know the current limitations and what you need to overcome them.

This book isn't written around any current certifications nor does it delve into any specific vendor's technology. What it does do is give you a great overview of different technologies, how they can be applied in your network and when they should be applied. It covers everything from business justification and how to determine what's really worth the investment, to a break down of Ethernet frames and where each technology is involved. Frankly, it's a bit of a dry read but you can recognize the importance of understanding these items easily, as well as how they apply to your environment.

The book starts with an overview of the OSI model and follows with definitions of key terms you need to understand when designing and managing a large-scale LAN. When is the last time you actually performed a Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) analysis of individual components within a type of switch to understand how you should stock your spares closet? Do you know that MTBF actually means the statistical likelihood that half of all equipment of this type will no longer function after this length of time? How about calculating the probability of multiple, simultaneous failures based off of MTBF? The book then goes into scenarios covering everything from why you would choose a particular routing protocol over another, to the administrative pros and cons of that decision, as well as bottleneck and congestion considerations.

For network managers who think they "know it all," this book will remind them of some things they do before implementing or starting any major project. For hands-on technicians doing the design work, it'll show them different solutions to a problem and why to opt for one over the other. Department managers will find the book gives them the business justification for implementing any major project. If you fill any of the above roles within your organization and even if you only have a mid-size network, this book will show you how to make your network more robust, reliable, scalable and secure, as well as justify why you may want to (or not). I highly recommend this to anyone who works with networks on a regular basis.