This great book is not only a Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) handbook, as advertised, but it covers enough of the lower-speed protocols and standards to convey a wide and sweeping overview of the general topic of network design and protocols of all kinds. The author, who is clearly knowledgeable of the FDDI as a set of protocols, lays out the advantages of using this relatively new set of protocols to achieve high-speed secure and reliable transfer of data among digital systems.

The author’s style is light, but not offensively so. It conveys the needed information in an entertaining manner. The presentation is aided immensely by brief summary outlines in boxes at the end of each important section. The diagrams and other tables are equally well done and informative, as one would expect. If the book errs, it errs on the side of providing more detail than one might need. Since the needs of an audience are difficult to gauge, this is not a bad practice.

I am not conversant with the design issues that went into the FDDI standards, so I learned more in reading the book than a communications engineer who has been working with the problem might. The book allows someone at a management level who only needs a superficial understanding of the issues to become familiar with them rapidly, and thus to better understand what a communications network designer might have to say about a specific project.

Because the book covers so many related topics, it is clearly of value as a handbook for an engineer working in the field, as well as for the novice computer systems worker who needs to understand some of the network design issues relating to projects that require the high speed of fiber.

The book consists of 26 chapters and 6 appendices. The chapters are:

• Overview

• Media Access Control

• Medium Independent Physical Layer (PHY)

• Fundamentals of Optical Communication

• Optical Components: Physical Layer Medium Dependent

• Single Mode Fiber: SMF-PMD

• Low-cost Fiber (LCF-PMD)

• FDDI on Twisted-pair Copper Cables

• FDDI on SONET

• Station Management (SMT)

• Connection and Ring Management (CMT and RMT)

• Network Management: SNMP and FDDI MIB

• Extension for Telecommunications: FDDI-II

• Enhanced Media Access Control: MAC-2

• Enhanced Medium-independent Physical Layer (PHY-2)

• FDDI Follow-on LAN

• Logical Link Control

• TCP/IP and OSI Protocols on FDDI

• Buying and Installing Fiber Cables

• Cable Plant: Design and Analysis

• Buying FDDI Products: What to Look For

• Performance Under Heavy Load

• Performance Under Normal Load

• Analytical Models, FDDI-II and Adapter Performance Issues

• Error Analysis

• Conformance Testing

The appendices are:

• Standards Organizations

• Sources for Further Information

• List of Symbols

• Solutions to Self-test Exercises

• Status of FDDI Standards

• Addresses of Manufacturers

This useful reference work will enable readers to educate themselves in the technology of high-speed networking. I recommend it to anyone working in or near the networking field.