Business Data Networks and Telecommunications (4th Edition)

This cutting-edge exploration of data communications features 11 core chapters of essential material and 6 advanced modules—allowing readers at all levels of expertise to get up to speed and keep pace with the latest developments in the field. Real-world case studies, hands-on exercises, and a Market Realities section give readers a feel of—and prepare them for—the broad range of situations they are likely to encounter on the job. Core Network Concepts. Standards. Physical Layer Propagation. A Small Ethernet PC Network. Other LAN Technologies. Telephony: Internal and External. Wide Area Networks (WANS). Internetworking. Security. Network Management and Systems Administration. Networked Applications. For Network administrators.

Dr. Ray Panko (Ray@Panko.com) is a professor of IT management in the College of Business Administration of the University of Hawaii. Before coming to the university, he was a project manager at Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International), where he conducted research for nearly every major telecommunications firm. He received his BS summa cum laude in physics and MBA from Seattle University. He received his doctorate in communication from Stanford University, where he graduated with a 4.0 GPA and where his dissertation was conducted under contract to the Office of the President of the United States.

His interest in networking began in the early 1970s, when the interdisciplinary Stanford "communications mafia" was at its peak and when a young doctoral student could work on verifying the effectiveness of the small satellite dishes we use today, could manage the design of a campus-wide LAN using cable television technology, and could pick a dissertation topic relevant enough for the White House to fund. Stanford Research Institute was even more fun because the author got to work on the ARPANET during its first few years, participate in discussions that defined e-mail, and work for Doug Engelbart, who invented the mouse and outline processing and who built the world's first working hypertext system and distributed team support system. In retrospect, it is amazing that many of the things he worked on then took so many years to come to fruition.

At the University of Hawaii, he discovered that teaching networking was even more fun than conducting research in networking and that writing a textbook could introduce thousands of students to this exciting field.