Computer Networks - (Fourth Edition)

Author: Xie Xiren (Editor-in-Chief)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-02-01
Features: Since the first edition of this textbook was published in 1989, computer network technology has undergone significant changes. Although this is the fourth edition, the authors feel that it remains quite challenging to keep the textbook in line with the development of network technology. While the new concepts and protocols in this textbook are proposed by others, for the authors, careful selection of content is still necessary. In the limited space available, the primary focus should be on clearly explaining the fundamental principles. Compared to the previous edition, the most significant changes in this edition are the increased emphasis on the TCP/IP protocol suite and the applications of the Internet, while some secondary and outdated content that is relatively far from the TCP/IP mainline has been removed. The new edition provides clearer explanations of key issues, such as the stop-and-wait protocol, the structure of routers and routing mechanisms, subnet masks and CIDR, and TCP congestion control. Newly added content includes: the main performance metrics of computer networks, the concept of framing at the link layer, virtual private networks (VPNs) and network address translation (NAT), system calls and application programming interfaces (APIs), and protocols for transmitting real-time data (RTP and RTCP). To avoid excessive expansion of the textbook, some relatively new content, such as MPLS, has also been removed in this edition. Due to the expanding application scope of IP technology, the coverage of ATM technology has been appropriately reduced. The new edition includes three appendices. Appendix A lists the most important English abbreviations, Appendix B provides key references and URLs, and Appendix C offers answers or hints for some exercises (rather than detailed solutions). For the most fundamental content, a star “” is added after the corresponding chapter titles in the table of contents. The accompanying CD-ROM includes common questions and answers collected by the authors over years of teaching. The demonstration files on the basic concepts of computer networks have been added in response to many readers' requests. Several readers have written to express their hope for a complete set of teaching materials for the entire course, but due to time constraints, such materials have not yet been produced.