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VPNs Illustrated: Tunnels, VPNs, and IPsec Review by Oliver
why I don't like this book
I bought this book aiming to gain indepth understanding of VPN technology, but I was disappointed. The key chapter 4, for example, try to explain tunnel concept left and right, but it mixed the general encapsulation and tunnel, and the verbose wording didn't make it any clear. Using tcpdump trace to explain some of the field is both a blessing and curse, depending on how you look at it - I think the book is sort of strong in specific details but weak in overall conceptual pictures - however most of those details have been better documented in the RFCs.
Another example - when talking about generic tunnel skeleton using FreeBSD as example (ch 4.8), where some code snippets are presented, I feel some background and detailed illustration of flow/drawing is necessary to clear up the concept and why it correlates prevoius sections, but none given.
It may sound a bit harsh: though the author try to emulate Rich Steven's style and dedicate the book to him, but it is hard for me to say the end product can really live up to Steven's standard.