From: danny@cs.su.oz.au (Danny Yee)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.reviews,rec.arts.books,alt.books.reviews,misc.books.technical,alt.books.technical,alt.culture.internet
Subject: Book Review - Casting the Net
Followup-To: alt.culture.internet
Date: 09 Jun 1995 18:31:06 MET
Organization: Basser Dept of Computer Sciece, Uni of Sydney, Australia
Originator: brock@ucsub.Colorado.EDU
title: Casting the Net
: From ARPANET to Internet and Beyond...
by: Peter H. Salus
publisher: Addison-Wesley 1995
subjects: computing
other: 299 pages, index
In _A Quarter Century of Unix_ Salus explored the history of Unix; in
_Casting the Net_ he turns to the history of the Net. After a brief
look at the "prehistory" of networking, he covers the development of
the ARPANET in some detail. He then discusses a variety of material,
organised thematically and roughly chronologically: early networks
in Europe and Japan (but nothing about Australia); the development
of new protocols (particularly for mail); the switch to TCP/IP;
the OSI protocol wars; UUCP and Usenet; BITNET and Fidonet (and
a bit on IBM's VNET); the NSFnet; the NREN and the NII; the most
recent commercialisation and explosion of the Internet; and so forth.
Information up to December 1994 is used, so _Casting the Net_ is not
_too_ badly out of date.
kIn a couple of places Salus pretends he's writing a book for the masses -- at one point he devotes a couple of pages to explaining the difference between datagram and circuit based networks, for example -- but this not maintained: while _Casting the Net_ doesn't assume a great deal of technical knowledge, it is still very much a technical history, written for those who work with networks and networking protocols. For example, as digressions it contains all the Aprils Fools' Day RFCs: this material can hardly be appreciated by anyone who's never read an RFC or tried to understand a networking protocol.
Whereas _A Quarter Century of Unix_ was built out of quotes, more of _Casting the Net_ is taken up by diagrams, time lines and digressions. Most of these are reprinted from easily accessible sources (like the digressions, many of the quotes are from RFCs), so there is a lot less original material than in the earlier book, and I don't think it is as impressive an achievement. There's still a lot of good material in it, however, and it's a good read (once again, I finished it within a day of receiving my copy). If you are after a compact technical history of the Net then there isn't much competition.--
Disclaimer: I accepted a review copy of _Casting the Net_ from Peter Salus and Addison-Wesley, but I have no stake, financial or otherwise, in its success.
--
%T Casting the Net %S From ARPANET to Internet and Beyond... %A Peter H. Salus %I Addison-Wesley %C Reading, Massachusetts %D 1995 %O paperback, index %G ISBN 0-201-87674-4 %P xv,299pp %K computing Danny Yee (danny@cs.su.oz.au) 8 June 1995 ------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright (C) Danny Yee 1995 : Comments and criticism welcome ------------------------------------------------------------- URL http://www.anatomy.su.oz.au/danny/book-reviews/index.html -------------------------------------------------------------