tcp-ip

I was mislead by the title. This book doesn't teach us the innards of TCP/IP or its programming or adminstration. Instead, it is a shallow survey of internet applications. All the good info is pointed at (rather than included) in the form of urls. I spent $20 for a bookmarks folder. It should have been called Internet for Chefs. The food analogies were the worst the authors could have chosen to illustrate the concepts. They were distracting, annoying and downright harmful to the text flow. The humor was tasteless, and the constant ridiculing of the "nerdy jargon" gives the feeling of authors who hate the subject matter rather than love it.

How do you teach TCP/IP to people who have little computer technology experience. That is what I faced as an engineer teaching 'newbies' the inside of the technology. My courses are taught to ordinary people, who just want a basic understanding of the field. TCP/IP is a tough subject to get across, even to 'techies'.
Having reviewed several books on the subject I found this to be the most useful. It's fun to read. It gets the IDEA across.
And, yes, it's not a book for serious, career seekers. It's a book for the average Joe - Joe Public.

I would agree with some of the reviewers, and say that it is wrongly titled as "TCP/IP for Dummies", in fact I was suprised by their title and what I actually read. However, I enjoyed the book because I had also an interest in the workings of the Internet. The authors state in the intro that "The thing about the TCP/IP communcations protcol is that it's fundamentally tied in with networking...So, we've included a bit about networks and The Internet..." So it did not delve into great details of TCP/IP, but then again it is an very introductory text. So it worked well in just the right amount of TCP/IP detail with a great thorough introduction to The Internet technology.

As to the accuracy of some statements, I don't know because I am not an expert. However, the writers are not dummies, in fact, when someone can take a difficult and complex subject, and bring it down to a layperson's understanding it often is a sign that they really understand what they are talking about.

Furthermore, this is an excellent introduction to the workings of the Internet. I had a very incomplete understanding of the hardware/software of the internet, it helped me greatly to better understand many of the terms that I've heard discussed in techie circles. True, the dinner plate allegory did not help at all, but when they discussed matters in a more simple technical way, it was great. I give it a **** four-star because although the organization may not have been perfect and the title is slightly misleading, it still did an excellent job of explaining the internet software/hardware in a thorough fashion.