
Worth the money - An exellent introduction to networking. Easy to understand and well laid out. Covers a broad range of subjects. The only down side is that is is not as technical as some may require.
Excellent for networking wanna-be s & home-LAN hobbyists - Hayden was entertaining and informative. This is an excellent reference for those interested in setting up home-based LANS with little or no prior experience. As an introduction to a complicated subject, Hayden succeeded in giving this reader plenty ah-hahs in each chapter. The book is limited in its coverage of the real world problems that make up the bulk of the networking profession, but these readers won t be trying to learn networking in 24 hours anyway. If you are going to have just one networking book on your shelf, make it this one.I will be considering other Sams books in the future.
not worth the time - This book is cheap conpared to most computer books and there is a reason for that. The thing that you ll waste, other than money, is your precious time. He repeats many things throughout the book. When you finish some of the chapters you realize that there was nothing, it was a desperate attempt to add another chapter. Some chapters are less than 4 pages!!!!!! Of course you can finish that in in less than an hour. The topics that he talks about the most are Win NT, NetWare and UNIX and he mentiones how they came into existance at least 3 times throughout the book. I can concentrate all the information from the book and put it onto 10-15 pages, not the 425 he managed to streach it onto. This was the third of the 24 hour books I ve read, and it will be the last. Save yourself the time and spend the extra money for the other types of books out there. I would only recomend this book to a total begginer and one that dosen t really want to get into depth about networking. And by that I mean you learn about routers, cables and switches, nothing more, the rest of the book is gibberish. But most people aren t like that. I really recomend you look for another book.
Concise, yet in-depth!!! - I believe Hayden hits all the major concepts well. Without dulling the issues with unecessary rhetoric! His analogies make the theory parts work well together. B-Luv
Great book!!! - This book was absolutely the best I ve read in a while. It is down to earth and simple to understand. Matt Hayden did an excellent job of making this book readable to dummies and techies alike.