Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach Featuring the Internet

The most up-to-date introduction to the field of computer networking, this book's top-down approach starts at the application layer and works down the protocol stack. It also uses the Internet as the main example of networks. This all creates a book relevant to those interested in networking today. By starting at the application-layer and working down the protocol stack, this book provides a relevant introduction of important concepts. Based on the rationale that once a reader understands the applications of networks they can understand the network services needed to support these applications, this book takes a "top-down" approach that exposes readers first to a concrete application and then draws into some of the deeper issues surrounding networking. This book focuses on the Internet as opposed to addressing it as one of many computer network technologies, further motivating the study of the material. This book is designed for programmers who need to learn the fundamentals of computer networking. It also has extensive material making it of great interest to networking professionals.

Jim Kurose is currently a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts. He is the eight-time recipient of the Outstanding Teacher Award from the National Technological University, the recipient of the Outstanding Teacher Award from the college of Natural Science and Mathematics at the University of Massachusetts, and the recipient of the 1996 Outstanding Teaching Award of the Northeast Association of Graduate Schools. He has been the recipient of a GE Fellowship, an IBM faculty Development Award, and a Lilly Teaching Fellowship.

Dr. Kurose is a former Editor-In-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Communications and of the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking. He is active in the program committees for IEEE Informcom, ACM SIGCOMM, and ACM SIGMETRICS. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Columbia University.

Keith Ross is the Leonard Shustek Chaired Professor in the Computer Science Department at Polytechnic University. He has previously been a professor at both Euricom Institute in France and the University of Pennsylvania. In 1999, he co-founded the Internet startup Wimba.com.

Dr. Ross has published over 50 papers and written two books. He has served on editorial boards of five major journals, and has served on the program committees of major networking conferences, including IEEE Infocom and ACM SIGCOMM. He has supervised more than 10 Ph.D. theses. His research and teaching interests include multimedia networking, asynchronous learning, Web catching, streaming audio and video, and traffic modeling. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.