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From: barns@GATEWAY.MITRE.ORG
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: "The Open Book" by Rose - your opinions sought
Message-ID: <9009071842.AA25675@gateway.mitre.org>
Date: 7 Sep 90 18:41:59 GMT
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I hadn't actually intended for my message to go out to the whole list,
but since it did (through my error), I suppose I should clarify it.

I don't have problems with what is in Open Book, taken on its own
terms.  Also I agree that Comer's book has limitations.  But the way
the original question was posed led me to interpret it as "I want a
book that tells me the things about OSI internetworking that Comer's
book tells me about TCP/IP internetworking - how well does Open Book
do that job?"  And in my opinion, there is maybe a 60% overlap in
scope between them.  For me, the 40% difference is enough to make
them "not comparable".  It isn't a question of better or worse, just
a difference in scope and areas of emphasis.  So if you want a
Comer-like boook on OSI, you buy the Open Book for the sake of the
60%, and if you like the other 40% of Open Book, that's gravy.

Someone might reasonably ask just which areas are covered by one and
not the other.  I don't have time to assemble a list, but the most
striking thing to me is that Comer is relatively heavier on what OSI
would term network and transport layer issues, and Rose is heavier on
upper layers.

/Bill Barns