Best-selling author and leading computer networking authority Douglas Comer builds a comprehensive picture of the technologies that allow the Internet to provide application services such as web browsing and instant messaging. This edition includes new chapters on the use of Internet technology.

The book offers an incomparable tour that explains everything from Internet applications to the lowest levels of packet transmission. It shows how protocols are layered, and explains how a given layer provides services used by the next higher layer. KEY FEATURES

Revised and updated throughout, including:

• FAQ email list with answers to questions from a leading networking authority
• NEW—Chapter 24, User Datagram Protocol: Introduces an end-to-end datagram protocol and shows how to use it. Once considered insignificant, UDP forms the important basis for multicast and broadcast applications and new applications that transfer audio or video.
• NEW—Chapter 26, Network Address Translation (NAT): Explains how NAT technology overcomes a major limitation of the Internet by allowing multiple computers to share a single IP address, especially important for residential and small business installations.
• NEW—Chapter 33, IP Telephony: Discusses the most exciting new Internet application, transmitting telephone calls over the Internet (VoIP). The chapter explains competing standards for IP telephony, including protocols such as H.323, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), and MegacoIt also shows a sample SIP session.
• Includes a CD-ROM with animations, packet traces, more than 200 photos of networking equipment, code from the book and copies of protocol standards. A Web site with additional items including instructional materials is at #LINK<http://netbook.cs.purdue.edu>#
• Accompanying lab manual, Hands-On Networking with Internet Technologies, Second Edition, offers an integrated package for teachers.

"I just could not put it down before I finished it. It was simply superb." — Lalit y. Raju, Regional Engineering College, India

"An excellent book for beginners and professionals alike. The coverage is comprehensive and up-to-date (including IP Telephony and NAT). The chapters are concise and easy to follow, a hallmark of Dr. Comer's writing style." -John Lin, Bell Labs

If you really want to understand how the Internet and other computer networks operate, start with "Computer Networks and Internets, Third Edition." Douglas E. Comer, who helped build the Internet, presents an up-to-the-minute tour of the Internet and internetworking, from low-level data transmission wiring all the way up to Web and chat services and other Internet application software. The new edition contains extensive coverage of network programming, as well as authoritative introductions to many new Internet protocols and technologies, from CIDR addressing to Network Address Translation (NAT).Comer explains every layer of the network protocol stack, showing exactly how facilities and services provided by one layer are used and extended in the next. Discover how networking hardware utilizes carrier signals, modulation and encoding; why internets use packet switching; how LANs, local loops, WANs, public and private networks work; and how protocols like TCP support internetworking. Learn the client/server model at the heart of most network applications, and understand key Internet/Web technologies including CGI, DNS, E-mail, ADSL, cable modems, and more. This new edition includes a complete new chapter on static and automatic Internet routing, introducing key concepts such as Autonomous Systems and hop metrics. It also provides a thorough introduction to network programming with three sample applications; detailed new coverage of CIDR addressing; a step-by-step guide to configuring Network Address Translation in home and small-business networks; and a full chapter on label switching and virtual circuits. Douglas Comer has been a respected leader of the Internet community for decades. Ifyou're interested in how networking and the Internet work, you won't find a better guide.For anyone interested in how the Internet and other computer networks work.

Douglas E. Comer is a professor at Purdue University, where he teaches popular computer networking courses. He consults for industry and teaches hundreds of professionals and diverse audiences around the world about the Internet at professional conferences and in onsite presentations. His series of books on networking and TCP/IP protocols receives high acclaim; his books are popular worldwide. One of the researchers who contributed to the formation of the Internet in the late 1970s and 1980s, he has served on the Internet Architecture Board, and is a Fellow of the ACM.

I. USING AND BUILDING INTERNET APPLICATIONS.

II. DATA TRANSMISSION.

III. PACKET TRANSMISSION.

IV. INTERNETWORKING.

V. NETWORK APPLICATIONS.