Computer Networks: A Systems Approach (5th Edition, 2011) - Larry Peterson & Bruce Davie {Morgan Kaufmann Series in Networking} [Seduction28]

Key Features

* Completely updated content with expanded coverage of the topics of utmost importance to networking professionals and students, including P2P, wireless, security, and applications.

* Increased focus on application layer issues where innovative and exciting research and design is currently the center of attention.

* Free downloadable network simulation software and lab experiments manual available.


Computer Networks: A Systems Approach, Fifth Edition, discusses the key principles of computer networking. It focuses on the underlying concepts and technologies that make the Internet work.

Topics covered include network design and architecture; the ways users can connect to a network; the concepts of switching, routing, and internetworking; end-to-end protocols; congestion control and resource allocation; end-to-end data; network security; and network applications such as e-mail and the Web, IP telephony and video streaming, and peer-to-peer file sharing. Each chapter includes a problem statement, which introduces issues to be examined; shaded sidebars that elaborate on a topic or introduce a related advanced topic; What’s Next? discussions that deal with emerging issues in research, the commercial world, or society; and exercises.

This book is written for graduate or upper-division undergraduate classes in computer networking. It will also be useful for industry professionals retraining for network-related assignments, as well as network practitioners seeking to understand the workings of network protocols and the big picture of networking.


Peterson and Davie provide a detailed yet clear description of the Internet protocols at all layers. Students will find many study aids that will help them gain a full understanding of the technology that is transforming our society. The book gets better with each edition.

-- Jean Walrand, University of California at Berkeley


I have used Computer Networks: A Systems Approach for over five years in an introductory course on communications networks aimed at upper-level undergraduates and first-year Masters students. I have gone through several editions and over the years the book has kept what from the beginning had been its main strength, namely, that it not only describes the ‘how,’ but also the ‘why’ and equally important, the ‘why not’ of things. It is a book that builds engineering intuition, and in this day and age of fast-paced technology changes, this is critical to develop a student's ability to make informed decisions on how to design or select the next generation systems.

-- Roch Guerin, University of Pennsylvania