Needs to calculator

When it came to explaining things, I liked the book. I though it did a very good job of making complicated concepts very basic and easy to understand.

Unfortunate, what I gained in clarity in the author's analogies was lost when he started to give actual examples with numbers in them.

For example, page 161 where he is giving an example on sub net masks. The example starts by stating "10001001101 is the binary representation of 1,102 = 11 bits are needed in the subnet mask." That is not correct 1,102 = 10001001110. So does that mean since the last bit is zero that only 10 bits are needed? - or do we still need 11 bits? - examples should help clarify the point, not add to the confusion.

Another example is on page 97. It gives a formula to figure out the number of available networks in a network class - and using this formula it would mean a Class A network would have 2^7 networks (8 bits minus 1 because the first bit is zero to designate it a Class A) which equals 128. But his summary chart on that same page says 126 - and just a few pages before (page 93) he walks you through an detailed example of how many networks are in a class A, but he gives you an answer of 127. So what is right? 126, 127 or 128?

Are you confused, because by the time I was done reading just two chapters I was. Unfortunately, the book is riddled with these inconsistencies. If you are new to TCP IP, have a need to understand network addressing and are only going to get one book, this is not the one.

Other Reviews

• Needs to calculator
• Simplistic, and in many places just plain incorrect.
• start learning about tcp/ip here
• This is it
• Good Description of Subnetting, Silly Analogies