Fun-Day Friday – Book Review – Networking for Systems Administrators chapter 0

The lack of votes has been heard, tallied, and respected.  The winner is “book reviews” each Friday for a while.  I decided to do a chapter by chapter review, though I may include multiple chapters in any given review as we move along.

Our first book will be “Netowrking for Systems Administrators” by (surprise) Michael W. Lucas.

Since this book has a “Chapter 0,” we’ll just cover it, today.

This chapter is an introduction chapter, which addresses whom the book is for (systems administrators, DBAs, web administrators, developers, and other computing professionals.)  It also includes a note to network administrators to explain what will and will not be covered, since the size of the book is limited.

After the niceties are covered, he defines what he means by “server” versus “network device.”  The distinctions are important for the argumentative people that look for ways to nitpick.

Next, he covers a slew of basic network troubleshooting and analysis tools that are common across multiple operating systems to ensure that the reader can go ahead and get comfortable with looking for and trying out these tools if they aren’t already somewhat familiar with them.

Tools that range from basic “host,” “nslookup,” and “netstat” commands to advanced “tcpdump,” and “wireshark” commands are listed for the user to learn.

Finally, he does his best to give a very brief overview of how the remaining chapters break down.  There are two groups of chapters mentioned.  Chapters 1 through 6 cover technologies that systems administrators really should know.  Chapters 7 through 12 cover inspecting network information passively as well as actively probing the network for troubleshooting and analysis.

Lucas’ calculated humor is definitely present, and my initial take on the book (I’ve read the whole thing, just reviewing on chapter today) is that every IT professional should own a copy of this book.

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