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 Features - September
1999 - Book review II
Phil Edwards reviews Karanjit Siyan’s book,
Windows NT TCP/IP and Windows NT DNS by Michael Masterson, Herman Knief, Scott Vinick and
Eric Roul.
Karanjit Siyan, Windows NT TCP/IP Michael
Masterson, Herman Knief, Scott Vinick and Eric Roul, Windows NT DNS (both New
Riders, £26.95)
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If you want a friendly, hand-holding introduction to
DHCP, WINS and the SMB architecture, look elsewhere. If, on the other hand, you know
enough about network management to bluff your way through and you want to get some real
information, Karanjit Siyan’s book is for you.
The range and depth of Siyan’s knowledge is mind-boggling. A chapter on
‘Advanced TCP/IP Configuration’ includes a six-page guide to the Registry and
four pages of Perl scripts, complete with explanatory comments for Perl novices; the 29
graphics in the ‘Routing with Microsoft TCP/IP’ chapter include screenshots,
network topology diagrams and charts showing how to break down IP addresses. And then
there’s the ‘TCP/IP Protocol Traces’ chapter, which consists of thirty
pages of just that, together with fifteen pages of comments ("The flags field in
packet 9 is the same as for packet 7, but the flags2 field incidates that UNICODE strings
were used".) Not to mention the chapters on DNS, NFS, DHCP, SNMP, PPTP, SMTP, POP3,
IMAP4 and PING. (Coincidentally, this is the sound your brain will make if you try to read
this book straight through.)
As light reading, Siyan’s book is for propellerheads only. As a reference work
it’ll be of interest to anyone with a network to run - and in the right (or wrong)
circumstances it could be a life-saver. One note of caution: Siyan’s focus is very
much on ‘how to’ rather than ‘what is’ questions: in his chapter on
DNS, for instance, the question ‘What is DNS?’ occupies one page out of 44.
Which is where Masterson and friends come in. Windows NT DNS takes us back to
technical books as light reading. Masterson’s style is chatty and unobtrusively
didactic - each chapter is bookended with an introduction and a summary. Considering that
the book is also briefer than Siyan’s, covers less ground and assumes less prior
knowledge, at first sight it looks like an entry-level text. However, once you get past
the first chapter this impression is rapidly dispelled. After an introductory section
comparing and contrasting the standard DNS with its NT-specific alternative, the
NetBIOS-based WINS, Masterson explains in detail how DNS is organised, how name resolution
works, how DNS-specific information is held and what happens when a name server is
queried. The third section of the book builds on the first two with a clear and
comprehensive guide to implementing and using DNS: how to integrate with WINS, how to
configure clients, how to register a domain. Particularly useful is the chapter on network
tools, including command line options and sample output. The book is completed by a set of
appendices documenting everything from the top level domains currently in use to the
implications of IPv6 for DNS.
Masterson and co. have produced a clear and detailed guide to a formidably complex
subject: anyone whose job specification includes the word ‘Internet’ will get
something out of this book. Judging from its current list of titles and its stylish
monochrome-and-blue covers, the New Riders imprint is aiming to become the O’Reilly
of NT. Books like this one and Siyan’s will stand it in good stead. |
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