Guide to TCP/IP: IPv6 and IPv4

This book is more like a reference guide than an introductory guide. If this book was marketed as a reference guide, it would easily be 5-star material. However, this is the start of the publisher's description: "Guide to TCP/IP: IPv6 and IPv4 introduces students to the concepts, terminology, protocols, and services that the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite uses to make the Internet work."I am five chapters (over 250 pages!) into this book and it is simply chocked full of acronyms, protocols, and more. There is no explanation on where this all fits in the OSI model layer in each chapter. Each chapter picks a topic and rambles on for 50-100 pages about the topic describing every little bit in detail. (In fact, the OSI Model isn't even explained in any order --they show you a graphic, but don't label what is layer 1, 2, ...7).This book is not good for learning TCP/IP. It is a reference guide, and a very good one at that.For this to be an introductory guide, I would expect more graphics --especially flow charts that show how information moves using the protocols described. For the introductory student, this book is taxing as it requires the student to memorize hundreds of acronyms, protocols, and field names, but doesn't tie it together well with many diagrams showing how a network packet would move from point-to-point. Visual representations go a long ways towards teaching this type of material.One more issue I have with this book is the price. It is very expensive for reference material that is documented in RFCs. Yes, the authors collected it all up and packaged it together in one place, but really, this i supposed to be a teaching book, not a comprehensive deep-dive of information contained in RFCs. The authors spend little time (at least in the first 5 chapters) explaining it all. I feel they have lived and breathed these network concepts for so long, to them it is second nature and perhaps they don't realize that they need to explain things in more detail and provide more diagrams on how TCP/IP works to move packets from place to place, and whether the information is physical, data, application, etc... The cost of the Kindle version of this book is over-inflated for material that originates from RFCs.If this book was marketed as a reference guide, I'd give it 5 stars. But as an introductory college text, it is only 3 stars --and I struggle to give it 3.Thank you.*** UPDATE 2017-10-7 ***I'd like to add that I am using the Kindle version, which mirrors the print version. It shows each page as you would see each page in a printed book. However, there is one difference. The screen snapshots from Wireshark (and there are many in the book) are compressed so much that they are unreadable. The same goes for many of the screen snapshots for CLI windows as well. Other images and drawings in the book are sharp and easy to read.

I only need this book for a 6 week course and contacted to see if discount can be offered. The answer was no and I’m paying for a 4 month rental. The book is okay in my opinion. The concept is not clearly defined.

I bought this book for my networking class and I've used it a lot, the information is easy to understand and the images provide clear examples. Great book!

The book seems to be very good, but the price is outrageous.

Looks a little worn but more than capable of getting me through the semester. Quite a bit cheaper than buying.

Great info

Easy to understand