Review By: Tony Alabi
07/21/2003

This book is a comprehensive guide to network architectural design—choosing and developing tools in implementing, optimizing, deploying, and managing the next generation of the various services being offered on the Internet in both the business and nonbusiness worlds.

The book serves as an excellent source of reference, offering “how-to-use” paragraphs on different types of tools on the market, shareware and freeware databases, with references on how to account for and allocate the costs of resources and services implementation, and engineering time.

The introduction explains and describes the definitions and terms used both in hypothetical situations and legitimately in the industry. This is followed by very detailed and explicit descriptions of the various components of the network, as we know it today, delving into adequate depth in identifying and describing the efficient use of every subcomponent, in the various components of the network. The pros and cons of such subcomponents as the IP, TCP, UDP, Multi-Protocol Label Switching Protocol or MPLS are presented. Optimization techniques of the IP router, packet routing, packet fragmentation problems, and traffic management are discussed in great detail.

With the definitions and description of tools completed, several Quality of Service architectures are discussed, in almost granular detail. QoS architectures mentioned include IP type architecture, Integrated Services architecture, Pre-Application reservation architecture, Differentiated Services architecture, and Service Management architecture. The Internet Performance Survival Guide went further in providing excellent descriptions of typical applications for managed service performance.

The book concludes by taking a peek at the economic ramifications of Quality of Service methodology, engineering, optimizing and deploying with regard to marketing, the accounting estimation of costs involved, pros and cons of using various service packages. Also, certain flaws of QoS are discussed briefly. Finally, a decent glossary section at the end of the book serves as a dictionary of commonly used network industry terminology.

I highly recommend this book, as it did an excellent job in the presentation of the subject matter. It lives up to its name as a guide for strategies and implementation of the QoS services for both today’s networks and the next generation networks. Loaded with easy-to-understand definitions, terminology, tools information, tool-tuning information, and performance techniques, it serves as a great resource for engineers, network engineers, and network architects alike. The last two chapters go the extra mile in providing useful material and information that can be used by any business manager and nonengineering people in understanding the cause-and-effect of any QoS strategies they choose to adopt, as well as the ability to determine usage billing.

The style of the book is very user friendly. The organization and presentation of the material, laid out as conceptual, components, implementation, and performance improvement, plus the pros and cons of any approach adopted, facilitate a whole-picture perspective. In this manner, the various pieces of the puzzle involved in delivering quality service across the networks are tied as a single entity. This material will help organizations determine the types of architecture, applications, and services that meet the demands of their environment.

The white paper information, plus the methodologies and mechanisms described, provide resources for testing and QA for the various configurations described. Evaluation and examination of certain metrics information, performance techniques, variables, and expected results will meet several QA requirements and expectations. Performance can be measured and reconfigured, accurate costs can be deduced, thereby enabling the introductions of several new business models, and accurate services delivered, if good use of the information in the book is adopted by any organization.