Designing the Total Area Network: Intranets, VPNs and Enterprise Networks Explained

Mark Norris and Steve Pretty take on a huge subject in Designing the Total Area Network, and they make their task even trickier by aiming to satisfy technical experts as well as their managers. They succeed remarkably well, combining detailed facts about several enterprise-networking technologies with advice on choosing and implementing the ones that best fit a given organization's needs. More importantly, they describe a strategy for approaching big networking jobs. The strategy--suitable for in-house network managers or peripatetic consultants--maximizes network reliability while minimizing expense and making the process as predictable as possible.
Readers won't find much in these pages about specific products--Microsoft Windows 2000, say, or Cisco routers--but they will find out how to identify needs and evaluate solutions. Most helpful are the checklists that help keep the designer from overlooking details at key points in the life cycle of an enterprise network.
($140.00)