Open Source Network Administration - Review By Edward Corrado

Open Source Network Administration by James M. Kretchmar is a book about various open source tools that can be used to monitor, troubleshoot, and manage different facets of network administration. The overview and introduction of SNMP included in this book is very good. Each tool is explained in detail including an overview, installation instructions, how to use, maintaining, and examples of use. References are also included. The book is well laid out and written in a clear manner.

I do not do much (or have much experience) with SNMP or administrating network devices such as routers and switches but I believe that this book would be a good read for someone who needs to administer network devices with SNMP. Although I do not do much with SNMP I still learned some interesting things on how to more effectively use basic network tools such as MTR (Matt.s traceroute) and netstat. I am going to stop a little short of recommending this book - not because I don.t think it is a good book - but because I do not have enough knowledge or experience in this subject to properly evaluate the content (although my gut feeling is that it would be useful for the target audience). That said, from what I could understand I thought it was a good book and I hope someone else in the group with more knowledge in this area will review this book for us.