Routing and Switching: Time of Convergence?;

This book, Routing and Switching: Time of Convergence?, aims to help users, network designers and technicians, and IT decision makers, in their proper understanding of the interconnecting possibilities of today and potential for tomorrow (which may come more quickly than we might have thought yesterday). The book provides a detailed explanation of all related principles, starting from an overview of communication networks, through the operation of Layer 2 internetworking devices - bridges and switches, the latter both in LANs and WANs - to the operation of Layer 3 devices - routers. This book devotes more time to more complex routing technologies and their application in IP and non-IP environments, such as (still present) Novell IPX/SPX, AppleTalk, (very slowly penetrating) OSI, (almost forgotten but not completely) DecNet, Banyan VINES, and (where it all started) XNS.