 |
|
When Gibbons presented the final volume of his masterful Fall of the Roman Empire in the 1780s, a semiliterate nobleman congratulated him on his achievement with the words, "Another damn square, fat book, eh, Mr. Gibbons?"
Black's ATM Volume I is a fat book indeed, but hardly damnable. In fact, I can't put it down.
To bring us by steps to enlightenment on Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), that most heavy-duty of wide-area network regimens, the author commences with an exposition on the current telecommunications infrastructure which could have been a book on its own.
Black traces the history of distance electronic communications from the 1950s to the present. He explores with the reader both the strengths and the weaknesses of the approaches to technology taken first by Ma Bell and later by others from the 1970s onward.
Black's careful treatment is highly professional and carefully avoids faddism. He meticulously explains the reasoning that went into the design of what is now legacy architecture, so that the reader can appreciate concepts in the context of the times in which they were implemented. In the process, several mysteries, (well, what were mysteries to me, anyhow), are solved, such as why my home phone won't disconnect in timely fashion when that abominable "The Lie-ine Is Busy" voiceover attempts to extort thirty cents for an automatic redial.
OSI layers, TCP/IP implementation on broadband networks, X.25, T1/E1, DS1/DS3, ISDN, SONET and other WAN models and protocols are explicated with admirable economy, and all this as mere preparation for the ATM discussion that follows.
The ATM discussion itself is so broad, it can hardly be summarized within the bandwidth of this brief book review. Suffice it to say that Black is not satisfied that you know what cell size is unless you understand precisely the statistical rationale behind the choice of size. This "come let us reason together" spirit imbues the entire work and the copious diagrams that accompany the text.
ATM Volume I is a book for propeller heads like you and me, who are really fascinated by this stuff, people to whom data is data, and whose concern is that bits get lovingly wrapped and posted to their ultimate destination.
Genuine propeller-head books seem always to be printed on that heavy absorbent paper. I guess it's because they expect you to have them with you in the field and to spill coffee on them. ATM Volume I shares with other books of the propeller-head genre a few minor defects. The index is a little sparse. There is a table of acronyms in the back, but some acronyms (STP, for example) are overloaded in the text and not all overloads appear in the table.
Who cares? You're going to read this one page by page and absorb it, while the pages absorb your coffee.
-- Jack Woehr
| Readability |
|
| Originality |
|
| Organization |
|
| Accuracy |
|
| Consistency |
|
| Depth |
|
| Timeliness |
|
| Editing |
|
| Design |
|
| Overall Value |
|
Explanation of ERCB rating scale: No stars = unacceptable, 1 Star = marginal, 2 Stars = average, 3 Stars = above average, 4 Stars = exceptional.