There are books on ATM standards and on ATM in general. This is not one of them. It devotes fewer than 16 pages to a description of ATM. Amazingly, the author devotes pages 9 through 82 to the Internet Society bodies and to its notion of a Request for Comments (RFC), quite a bit for a book of 213 pages.

The subtitle, RFCs and protocols made practical, explains why ATM is not the focus of this book. The book is really a guide through some of the many thousands of RFCs on Internet issues, highlighting those related to ATM. It also contains a few pointers to ATM Forum publications. Contradicting the title, most of these documents are not standards, but are, at best, proposed standards or just proposals.

The author thinks his book is a must for those who develop hardware or Internet applications that interface with ATM networks. Also targeted are network designers and administrators, as well as anyone interested in how the Internet works. This is a large and diverse crowd, and I find the author to be optimistic about the importance of his book to the network community.

At first, I was skeptical about whether a book on RFCs is of any relevance whatsoever. Having read it, I changed my mind. This book is a useful compendium, informing readers of where useful information is and how to find it. Software developers will save a lot of time by having a copy handy. While it contains little information about standards and proposed standards, it supplies a wealth of pointers to where these documents can be found.

The book is organized in chapters covering specific topics. Each chapter begins with a short preface, followed by a long list of sources pertinent to the topic, allowing readers to quickly find the desired information. For example, readers who care to know more about the RSVP proposed standard can find in a minute that the documents to read are RFC 2205, RFC 2379, RFC 2380, and RFC 2382.

Occasionally, the book contains actual information in great detail, such as the format of NHRP packet headers (pp. 167–174, extracted from RFC2332). In other cases, it only gives references, without any introduction (for example, IPv6 over ATM).

The book contains no list of references to other books of possible interest. The absence of references to books on ATM is particularly surprising. The index is poor (I did not find entries for ASN.1, used on p. 198, nor for IPv6, which is referenced numerous times, in particular on pp. 207–209). This volume is definitely not a potential textbook, and I would buy it only if I really intended to read the relevant RFCs.