Telecom/1996-04-telecom-walnutcreek.iso/book.reviews/internet.primer-lawley

Internet Message Format | 1995-01-05 | 4KB

Date: Mon, 22 Aug 1994 00:03:07 MDT
From: Rob Slade <[e-mail]>
Subject: Book Review: "Internet Primer" by Lawley/Summerhill


BKINTPRM.RVW  940607

Mecklermedia
11 Ferry Lane West
Westport, CT 06880
"Internet Primer", Lawley/Summerhill, 1993, 0-88736-831-X, U$29.95/C$37.50
[e-mail]

A primer is supposed to be a short introduction to a topic, and does
not need to go into a lot of depth.  Generally, a primer is intended
for a naive audience.  In some cases, however, an audience can be
specified, as is the case with this book, and then one expects the
material to start at a somewhat higher level of sophistication.
Therefore, it may come as a shock to information professionals to
learn, around about chapter three, that the authors intended all along
to address the "Key-Pressing End User".  (One's confidence in the
level of the book is not bolstered by the authors' admission,
immediately thereafter, that they are, themselves, "end users without
formal technical training.")

Chapter one defines the Internet in, as is becoming all too common,
historical, contractual and legislative terms, rather than technical
or functional ones.  It is also highly US-centric, as is the list of
Internet providers in chapter two which purports to be an overview of
current networks.  (The "currency" is questionable as well: the public
access UNIX list is supposed to date from December of 1991, which is
old enough, but contains listings of sites dead almost a year before
that date.)

Chapter three contains discussions of levels of connectivity, text
file formats and data compression which are great for the novice user.
Dealing with technical concepts as it does, though, it also
demonstrates the greatest concentration of fundamental conceptual
errors I can recall seeing in one place.  These mistakes are not just
implied by a rather silly example of the mail being delivered by
packet switch methods, but are made outright in statements that
packet-switching has no value in low speed connections.  The Internet
RFC (Request For Comments) process of distributed work is described in
traditional and very formal terms.  The client/server model is stated
to be "more sophisticated" than SMTP, ftp and telnet -- all of which use
and rely on client/server.  The numeric IP addresses are described as
"four octets separated by a single period" and ranging from, "1.1.1.1
(1x8) through 256.256.256.256 (32x8)," which is not only incorrect,
but completely incomprehensible.  Perhaps the less said about the
coverage of Kermit, OSI, UUCP, and so forth, the better.  Even the
"good bits" suffer at times: the section on text file formats dwells
excessively on EBCDIC, and the section on "binary to text" conversions
refers solely to the Mac BinHex format, rather than the more common
unencode.  (Later on one finds that the only desktop client software
mentioned is for the Macintosh.  Shall we guess what computers the
authors have?)

Chapter four, on applications, is much better.  While brief, and
missing a conceptual framework, the descriptions nevertheless manage
to provide some practical detail without getting bogged down in
program specific minutiae.  The authors miss the distinction between
"moderating" and "digesting" a mailing list, and advise looking at
"smileys" at a 45 degree angle.  (To be fair, this last could be more
due to mathematical, than network, ignorance.)  The list of network
resources in chapter five is well chosen.  Chapter six, however,
entitled "Policy Issues," while it does cover some interesting ground,
appears to be more of a long editorial going ... nowhere.

Mecklermedia has made a strong push to be a major publisher on
Internet topics, both in terms of books and serial publications.
Their production of a book of this dubious quality is therefore odd.
There are interesting points, particularly for the network trainer.
This should not, however, be a "sole source" book, *particularly* for
the information professional.