About Book:

        Data communications and networking may be the fastest growing technologies in our culture today. One of the ramifications of the growth is a dramatic increase in the number of professions–Where an understanding of these technologies is essential for success and a proportionate increase in the number and types of students taking courses to learn about them.

Features of the Book:

      Several features of this text are designed to make it particularly easy for students to understand data communications and networking.

Structure:

      We have used the five- layer Internet model as the framework for the text not only because a through understanding of the model is essential to understanding most current networking theory but also because it is based on a structure of interdependencies: Each layer builds upon the layer beneath it and supports the layer above it. In the same way, each concept introduced in our text builds upon the concepts examined in the previous sections. The Internet model was chosen because it is a protocol that is fully implemented.

      This text is designed for students with little or no background in telecommunication or data communications.  For this reason, we use a bottom-up-approach. With this approach, students learn first about data communication (lower layers) before learning about networking (upper layers).