Open Source Computer Networks Book

Starting with Computer Networks: A Systems Approach, we are making our books available under Creative Commons licences. Computer Networks is available under a Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0) license. Our hope is that open sourcing this material will both make it widely available and serve as an attractor for new content: updating what's already there, expanding it to cover new topics, and augmenting the text with additional teaching collateral. You can contribute to the book and to the ancillary material that goes with delivering a networking course. 

Computer Networks: A Systems Approach (6th Edition)
     Web Version
     Print Version on Amazon
     Independent Booksellers (US, UK, Australia)
     Source on GitHub

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Systems Approach Book Series

Software-Defined Networking: A Systems Approach

$9.99

Software-Defined Networks (SDN) are transforming the Internet by replacing bundled, proprietary hardware and control software. SDN is being embraced by cloud providers, telcos, and enterprises, as it enables a new era innovation in networking. This book provides a comprehensive introduction to SDN from the perspective of those who are developing and leveraging the technology.


Book Features:

• Describes a complete SDN stack, illustrated with example open source software.
• Emphasizes underlying concepts, abstractions, and design rationale.
• Describes both fixed-function and programmable switching chips.
• Describes the P4-based toolchain for programming and controlling switches.
• Describes a range of SDN use cases: enterprises, datacenters, access networks.
• Includes hands-on programming exercises, downloadable from GitHub.

 

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Edge Cloud Operations: A Systems Approach

$9.99

The cloud is ubiquitous. Everyone uses the cloud to either access or deliver services, and now it is becoming ubiquitous in

another way. As applications are disaggregated, the cloud is expanding from hundreds of datacenters to tens of thousands of enterprises. This means it is becoming increasingly important to understand the principles of cloud operations: how resources are provisioned, how service lifecycles are managed, how runtime parameters are controlled, and how system behavior is monitored and corrected over time. This book gives a comprehensive and from-first-principles description of edge cloud operations. Features include:

• Describes a complete edge cloud operations stack, illustrated with example open source software.
• Emphasizes underlying concepts, abstractions, design rationale, and engineering tradeoffs.
• Explains how best practices in scalable cloud services are applied to operational challenges.
• Describes the interfaces that operators and developers use to realize DevOps practices.
• Defines terminology across management domains: Telco operators, Enterprise Admins, Cloud providers
• Includes an end-to-end management platform for an operational, multi-site hybrid cloud (available on GitHub).

"The authors provide a detailed overview of cloud operations in this new era of distributed clouds. To understand how it all works...you need to read this book." – Martin Casado, General Partner, a16z.

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TCP Congestion Control: A Systems Approach

$9.99

TCP Congestion Control has been a research topic for over 30 years. Since the pioneering work of Jacobson and Karels in the 1980s, hundreds of researchers have sought to improve the avoidance and control of congestion in the Internet. Over time, new ideas such as using delay as well as packet loss to detect congestion have taken hold. This book walks through all the key approaches and gives the reader a framework to understand the big picture and ongoing challenges of congestion control.

Features

• Emphasizes underlying concepts, key principles and design choices.
• Covers developments in congestion control from its early days through to the latest innovations.
• Includes both host-based approaches and router-based techniques such as Random Early Detection.
• Describes methodologies used to evaluate new congestion control algorithms.

"Congestion control is unquestionably one of the most important, most fundamental topics in computer networking...The 'systems approach' that Larry Peterson and Bruce Davie have championed is exactly what is needed to truly understand congestion control, where deep, system-wide issues in network architecture come to the fore." – Jim Kurose, U. Mass Amherst.

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Building on the Systems Approach that we adopted for our original Computer Networks text book, we are writing a series of "micro-books" that apply the systems lens to emerging topics. With thousands of factoids available on the web (especially when it comes to trending topics), the challenge is to distinguish between what's important and what's not; between what's superficial and what's lasting. Our goal for the series is to provide this perspective: to give students and professionals a measured dose of technical depth, a framework for understanding those details, and a foundation for acting on that understanding. We're just getting started, with two books completed to date and more in the works. Again, you can contribute to these books or contact us if you've got a suggestion for a topic we should cover.

TCP Congestion Control: A Systems Approach - Sharing Network Resources
     Web Version
 ​    Print & eBook on Amazon
​     Independent Booksellers (US, UK, Australia)
​     Source on GitHub
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Edge Cloud Operations: A Systems Approach - Enabling Industry 4.0
     Web Version
     ​Print & eBook on Amazon​
     Independent Booksellers (US, UK, Australia)
​     Source on GitHub
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Software-Defined Networks: A Systems Approach - The New Network Stack
     Web Version
     Print & eBook
     Japanese Translation
​     Independent Booksellers (US, UK, Australia)
​     Source on GitHub

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 Private 5G: A Systems Approach - 5G Connectivity as a Cloud Service
       Web Version (Pre-Release)
       Print & eBook (Coming Soon)
       Source on GitHub

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 5G Mobile Networks: A Systems Approach - Demystifying 5G
       Print & eBook
       Source on GitHub (Archived)

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As participants in the Amazon Associate program we may earn income from qualifying purchases using the links above.

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