[Gaprofitt]

HI All,

I need some advice. In the past 5 years i've been mainly a server and desktop hardware guy. My boss wants to me to start studying more on the network side. Can anyone recommend a good beginner book, I don't understand decimal to binary or which class addresses can communicate with other classes, subnetting, subnet masks etc. I know our network at work is badly designed as a Class A 10.0.x.x network but i'm not sure where to start but I definetly need to understand basic design principals and understand ip addressing.

Thanks,

Greg

[tain]

I think this book might interest you. It is a CCNA book and approaches many topics "the way Cisco sees it," but the writer, Todd Lammle, does a great job of laying out the basics in an interesting and humorous manner. This is the only geek book I have that actually made me laugh. I find that a good dose of humor helps me stay interested/focused

[RogueSpear]

This is where I usually send people:

http://www.learntcpip.com

[LLXX]

Books are not really worth buying when you can find almost all the information you need on the Internet (and you can even download books now).

Start here: http://en.wikipedia...._protocol_suite

[tain]

LLXX, on Dec 22 2006, 05:18 PM, said:

Books are not really worth buying when you can find almost all the information you need on the Internet...

Many people disagree with that statement.

Yeah, most of the info is online. But books are far from obsolete. They present information in a manner that is often better or more convenient than online sources. And some people even like books

[RogueSpear]

TAiN, on Dec 23 2006, 09:59 AM, said:

They present information in a manner that is often better or more convenient than online sources. And some people even like books

Agreed My favorites have always been Mark Minasi's books. By the time I'm done reading one there's a couple dozen of those sticky bookmark things hanging out the top

[Camarade_Tux]

TAiN, on Dec 23 2006, 02:59 PM, said:

LLXX, on Dec 22 2006, 05:18 PM, said:

Books are not really worth buying when you can find almost all the information you need on the Internet...

Many people disagree with that statement.

Yeah, most of the info is online. But books are far from obsolete. They present information in a manner that is often better or more convenient than online sources. And some people even like books

Subway anyone ?
And books can be taken away while requiring no power at all.
And as far as I'm concerned I find books easier to read than any text on a computer screen. Plus I don't have lots of thing to distract me from my reading (mails, forums...).

[LLXX]

Use a PDA?

Better than a waste of paper IMO.

This post has been edited by LLXX: 25 December 2006 - 09:31 PM

[RogueSpear]

LLXX, on Dec 25 2006, 11:31 PM, said:

Use a PDA?

Better than a waste of paper IMO.

Not as easy as it sounds. I've had an ipaq 3975 for several years now and in my experience PDF files on the Windows Mobile platform are pretty close to useless. It is definately the exception to the rule when you find a PDF file properly formatted for "reflow" or whatevr Adobe calls it. Word documents are not much better. The only thing I've ever found useful are .CHM files. You can find a couple of freeware chm file readers and they work great. The trick is finding the books you want in that format. It is possible as I carry around 600MB worth of essential reference material on an SD card, but sadly there is way more material formatted as PDF.

I've really enjoyed books in the .LIT format for Microsoft Reader but I've yet to encounter one single technical reference in that file format. And I'm not about to go through the trouble converting titles to it either.

[ringfinger]

TAiN, on Dec 21 2006, 07:51 PM, said:

I think this book might interest you. It is a CCNA book and approaches many topics "the way Cisco sees it," but the writer, Todd Lammle, does a great job of laying out the basics in an interesting and humorous manner. This is the only geek book I have that actually made me laugh. I find that a good dose of humor helps me stay interested/focused

I'm reading this now studying for the 640-801, although I have a background in networking already, TAiN is right, this is an amazing book and lays out everything in an easy to understand way. However, being that its a Cisco book, it is geared towards networking in the way that "Cisco wants you to learn it."