Routing & switching, time of convergence

This book, Routing and Switching: Time of Convergence?, aims to help users, network designers and technicians, and IT decision makers, in their proper understanding of the interconnecting possibilities of today and potential for tomorrow (which may come more quickly than we might have thought yesterday). The book provides a detailed explanation of all related principles, starting from an overview of communication networks, through the operation of Layer 2 internetworking devices bridges and switches, the latter both in LANs and WANs to the operation of Layer 3 devices routers. This book devotes more time to more complex routing technologies and their application in IP and non-IP environments, such as (still present) Novell IPX/SPX, AppleTalk, (very slowly penetrating) OSI, (almost forgotten but not completely) DecNet, Banyan VINES, and (where it all started) XNS.

PART I Communications networks 1CHAPTER 1 Architecture of communications systems 31.1 The OSI reference model of hierarchical communication 41.2 The seven layers of the OSI reference model 71.3 Actual network architectures 101.4 Addressing 101.5 Flow control 111.6 Connectionless and connection-oriented network services 151.7 Connections and network topology 16CHAPTER 2 Local and metropolitan area networking 172.1 LAN architecture 182.2 LAN standardization 232.3 Ethernet/IEEE 802.3 282.4 Token Ring/IEEE 802.5 392.5 Fiber distributed data interface 452.6 Wireless local networks 482.7 Fibre Channel and SANs 52CHAPTER 3 Wide area networking 553.1 Switched and non-switched facilities 563.2 DTE vs. DCE 573.3 Link protocols 583.4 Integrated services digital network 643.5 X.25 673.6 Frame Relay 703.7 Switched Megabit Data Service 763.8 Asynchronous transfer mode 793.9 SONET 1043.10 Service level agreements 106CHAPTER 4 Network management 1104.1 Distribution of management tasks 1104.2 ISO network management model 1114.3 TCP/IP network management 1134.4 Remote monitoring RMON 1144.5 Switch monitoring SMON 1164.6 Web-based management 117CHAPTER 5 Principles of network intercommunication 1195.1 Physical layer interconnection devices 1195.2 Link layer relays 1245.3 Network layer relays 1295.4 Application layer relays 1335.5 How to decide what to use 1355.6 Monitoring at internetworking devices 1355.7 Packet switching and cell relay 1365.8 Note on retransmission 138Part I Concluding remarks 139PART II Bridging 141CHAPTER 6 Bridging 1436.1 Bridging basics 1436.2 Transparent bridging 1496.3 Source-route bridging 167

* Up-to-date overview of interconnection technologies
* Practical guidelines for network designers
* Detailed exploration of routing and switching integration
* Covers all main architectures - TCP/IP Netware, OSI, DECnet et al
* Incorporates objective and summary boxes for each chapter