Mark Norris and Steve Pretty take on a huge subject in Designing the Total Area Network, and they make their task even trickier by aiming to satisfy technical experts as well as their managers. They succeed remarkably well, combining detailed facts about several enterprise-networking technologies with advice on choosing and implementing the ones that best fit a given organization's needs. More importantly, they describe a strategy for approaching big networking jobs. The strategy--suitable for in-house network managers or peripatetic consultants--maximizes network reliability while minimizing expense and making the process as predictable as possible.

Readers won't find much in these pages about specific products--Microsoft Windows 2000, say, or Cisco routers--but they will find out how to identify needs and evaluate solutions. Most helpful are the checklists that help keep the designer from overlooking details at key points in the life cycle of an enterprise network.

Norris and Pretty draw heavily on their experience to point out where problems are likely to occur and how to plan for them. A semifictitious case study walks you through designing and implementing a worldwide network for a bank. Once in a while, a British bias pops up, but the information is valid everywhere. You may want to investigate this book's companion volume, Total Area Networking. It places greater emphasis on technical background information, including networking technologies like Frame Relay and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM).