This concise guide offers the basic concepts of IP routing, free of hype and jargon. It begins with the simplest routing protocol, RIP, and then proceeds, in order of complexity, to IGRP, EIGRP, RIP2, OSPF, and finally to BGP. New concepts are presented one at a time in successive chapters. By the end, you will have mastered not only the fundamentals of all the major routing protocols, but also the underlying principles on which they are based. The basic information in IP Routing is designed to help you begin configuring protocols for Cisco routers. Although author Ravi Malhotra assumes that readers have a basic understanding of TCP/IP and are somewhat familiar with Cisco router configurations, he also assumes that you find some or all of these protocols difficult to work with. His book presents concepts simply, as nuts and bolts. Malhotra's use of plain language, analogy, and the recurring example of an imaginary network, which grows in complexity as the book progresses, will help you understand fundamental concepts behind each protocol. Once you master these concepts, you will benefit from the detailed information contained in Cisco manuals and web pages (such as bug lists, new features, design guides, etc). Depending on your skill level, you can either read IP Routing from cover to cover or use it as a reference for any of the protocols presented. The book describes administrative tools available to all the routing protocols, including those that block the advertisement of routing updates, and those that set up preferences for one routing protocol over another. Honed by years of teaching Data Communications at major universities and managing IP networks in production environments, Ravi Malhotra's knowledge of this subject makes IP Routing is the ideal primer to Internet routing protocols.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 13 Ratings

In regards to "What a piece of [expletive deleted]" - 2004-10-08
Reviewer Rating:
I just wanted to say, afting reading your review, I can no longer read people reviews as sources for whether a book is useful or not. I have this book, and know its quality.

This book does have grammatical errors, and has several typos. This is unfortunate, but not unimportant. It's not a romance novel, and shouldn't "turn you off".

So, you're frustrated about learning router languages? Well, most routers use routing languages similar to Cisco's. Even UNIX/Linux machines have scripts similar to Cisco's command-line. And did you expect to read a book about IP "routing" without talking about routers? To do IP routing, you configure the routers individually. IP Routing is how you setup up the protocols and configurations of each router. What were you expecting? A book about making your internet connection faster by cutting out some code?

"Multi-homing to different ISPs also creates problems with this schema. Uncle-Q has the address block 180.180.1.0/24 from ISP-X but he also connects to ISP-Z. ISP-Z would have to carry Brother-X's specific route 180.180.1.0/24. In other words, since ISP-Z advertises Brother-X's prefix, the routing tables in the attached ASs would see both the aggregate 180.180.0.0/16 from ISP-X and 180.180.1.0 from ISP-A."

What's hard to understand? You're experienced enough to have a preference for BGP, but you don't understand this? It's all subnets and gateways. If you like studying BGP, you must at least understand a little bit of it, right? Then how can you not understand this paragraph about three gateways running BGP? You should be able to make your own picture. Here's a picture: Draw a circle (ISP-Z) with a line to ISP-A (another circle). There's your picture. Maybe the author just assumed a two-node diagram was sufficient and the reader had a little imagination and/or common sense.

Protocols only - 2003-12-18
Reviewer Rating:
I was/am looking for a book on IP Routing. I can tell you this book is NOT for the beginner. It has no description on how IP addresses work or how subnets work. All it does is talk about the different protocols. This might be helpful once the reader understands the basics but not until then.

Uninteresting and doesn't cover much for the topic. - 2003-05-11
Reviewer Rating:
I don't see the point. There's not a lot that can be used or applied. Just reading generalizations and not offering anything near the amount of knowledge and usefulness as a book dedicated to this topic should.

Too many errors making this book not worth buying. - 2008-06-22
Reviewer Rating:
This books has more than two hundred of errors (I did not count them, but you can print out the errata (about 13 pages) at o'reilley site), some quite serious.
It shows that this book is careless reviewed and prepared. Buy other books instead of this one since it is also outdated.

Too many errors ! - 2003-04-25
Reviewer Rating:
This should be a 5 animal O'Reilly book. Unfortunately, there are too many typos or errors in the book. A router newbie would be thoroughly lost with the examples. Interfaces are incorrectly labeled in diagrams, networks mislabeled, etc. If you have a good networking background already, you can probably wade through the book. It does a fair job of explaining how the different routing protocols are implemented on Cisco routers. Shame on O'Reilly for releasing this book - and you think Windoze crashes too much ??!!

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