Iwhat has happened in that time. We have seen the transformation of the Web from
a small experiment to a World Wide phenomenon. We have seen the emergence
of voice over IP and peer-to-peer content sharing. We have seen technology speed up
a hundred-fold, the emergence of broadband to the home, and the rise of botnets and
other horrid security problems. Many things have changed, technology has come and
gone, and (perhaps equally amazing) much of the basics of the Internet are still there.
This book, too, has changed much in ten years, with four editions to keep up. But
the basic value of the book remains the same as the first edition. This book gives you the
facts you need, and puts those facts into the larger context so that the knowledge you
gain will be of value even as the details change. Reading this book informs you about
today and prepares you for tomorrow. One new feature is a set of sidebars that illustrate
the context of ideas being presented in the text—the why of the ideas. Why did an idea
fail? Why did it succeed?
What has changed in the book? Some technologies have faded from sight, and get
less attention in this edition. We bid a fond farewell to FDDI and ATM LANs. Some
technologies have mutated and emerged in new forms. Remote Procedure Call is no
longer a LAN-based low-level invocation mechanism, but the foundation of Internetwide
Web Services. We welcome gigabit Ethernet, an updated and expanded section on
wireless, and more on router implementation. The material on TCP is up to date, with
discussion of new acknowledgment schemes and extensions for high speed.
With the increasing concern with security, there is a completely revised chapter
with a new emphasis on a systems approach to security, and a discussion of threats and
how to counter them. And at the end, there is a chapter that helps you “put it all together,”
using case studies at the application layer (VOIP, multimedia, and peer to peer)
to show how all the concepts from the previous chapters combine to provide the system
that supports these applications.
