A question for the NG

I am in discussions with the publisher of "The Switch Book" aimed at creating a revised, second edition of that work. I would be interested to hear what changes you think need to be made to bring the book up-to-date.

Of course, any such revision would correct all known errors, and generally provide an editorial "freshening up." Obvious additional material includes RSTP and MSTP, and more depth on multi-layer switching, but I would like to hear what else people working in the field are looking for. The people in this NG are an important segment of the target readership.

Also, I welcome your input as to whether the chapters "Bridging Between Technologies" (Chapter 3, on the problems of bridging among Ethernet, Token Ring and FDDI) and "Source Route Bridging" (Chapter 6) should be discarded, moved to an Appendix, or left as they are, with a note about their purely historical importance.

I make no promises as to what material will be added, or whether a second edition will even be produced, but I thought I would take this opportunity to get input from the people that actually use my books before signing off on a Table of Contents for a revised edition.

Feel free to respond either on the newsgroup, or via private email. Thank you all in advance.

-- Rich Seifert Networks and Communications Consulting 21885 Bear Creek Way (408) 395-5700 Los Gatos, CA 95033 (408) 228-0803 FAX

Send replies to: usenet at richseifert dot com

Reply to
Rich Seifert
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Rich Seifert wrote in part:

Thanks for asking.

I believe chapters on "Conformance Verification", "Performance Measurement" and maybe even "Troubleshooting" would be useful. But I'm not sure these are entirely suitable for your book which I perceive has a tone of standards/protocols/design.

Those specific problems have faded in significance, but the concepts remain valid. atm2eth has become far more important, and QoS, IPv6 prioritizing and even non-neutrality have become more relevant. These are TR-flashback nightmares :)

-- Robert

Reply to
Robert Redelmeier

Chetan>> I think, the new version of the book is very much required. I have gone through the book according to my needs and I have found the book really useful.

Chetan>> Even i feel that they should be moved to Appendix (but not deleted altogether).

Chetan>> Some more topics like Provider Bridges(802.1ad), Customer Edge Spanning Tree or even Ethernet OAM can be included.

Chetan>> Also, can be included a note/your vision on, which way the ethernet is headed for. What is the focus of development these days in L2 domain.

Chetan>> From Link aggregation point of view, more detailed explanation of all sorts of priorities (Aggregate: Actor System Priority, Partner System Priority, Port Actor System Prioirity, Port Partner System Priority, Port Priority etc). What is the practical usage of these priorities.

Something related to Multicast traffic/IPTV on linkaggregation can be explored in the book.

I am not sure if you would like these suggestions, but these were the difficult areas i faced when i worked with LACP.

Chetan>> I do not have access to the book right now, so i am basing my comments based on when i read the book about 2-3 months back. So i am not able to provide all the things i thought.felt when i was going through the book.

Regards, Chetandeep Singh

Reply to
CD>

Ethernet over - MPLS, SDH etc.

i would like to see something like the RFC schema - depreciated, best practice and so on.

Often the reasoning that explains the choices makes it much easier to pick a good way to do something. (or if you are paranoid, easier to avoid a bad way).

it is still out there - but the IBM redbooks were still on line last time i checked.

maybe the equivalent for 802.11?

stacked VLANs, Ethernet as a WAN technology and what that means to how you debug it etc.

which flavour of spanning tree actually is least dangerous....?

Reply to
stephen

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