A rapidly growing collection of user-friendly literature is emerging to serve the information needs of the networking professional. This text is an impressive addition to that literature. As a self-help guidebook, it is close to encyclopedic in content and scope. The target audience, according to the title, is network administrators, but in fact, this guide presents information that will be of value to a variety of staff specialists who are responsible for providing network services and support at most contemporary enterprises in the public and private sectors. I would venture a guess that virtually anyone connected with information systems network operations, no matter what their previous state of knowledge, will find some helpful nugget within this massive guide. Most network specialists will probably find quite a few.

The text is organized into four topics, each of which is organized into two to four somewhat autonomous sections known as “books,” each of which in turn is organized into two to seven chapters. There are also seven large appendices and an extended table of contents and index. The topics are network administration strategies, network client management, network expansion, and network maintenance. The presentation in most of the book’s 54 chapters is broadly oriented toward new network implementations and upgrades of existing networks, the care and feeding of network hardware and software, and the support of demanding network users. Each of the books presents basic terminology and usage; explanations of common technology; and a plethora of advice, step-by-step guidelines, task lists, and instructive real-world examples. The text is backed up by extensive technical and operational reference material in the appendices.

The “survival guide” aspect of this text, while providing a cute title, has an inherent value. Although it is not a technical publication providing computer science and systems engineering detail, neither is it a shallow overview of underlying networking concepts and principles. It is very well written and edited. At its heart, this is an easy-to-read guide to the diagnosis and resolution of a multitude of information network problems that are encountered by most network administrative and support personnel. Representative topics include system configuration and installation, Internet Protocol addressing, hardware troubleshooting, and preparing users to interact with the network. More technical topics such as data structures, operating systems, network security, and applications software are covered in sufficient detail for a general guidebook. These topical presentations are not centered on any single operating system or service provider; rather, a wide range of network and client operating systems and service providers are discussed at appropriate levels of detail.

It is easy to strongly recommend this text to a broad audience of network and systems managers, administrators, and associated technical specialists whose understanding and application of networking processes are increasingly critical to the functioning of their organizations. I also recommend it as a reference and guidebook to the larger audience of computer network users who should endeavor to be more comfortable with the basics of the networking systems upon which they rely.