Review: Linux Routers

Tony Mancill Prentice Hall
8 Chapters and five appendices in 346 Pages. Costs about £36 UK

Chapters

            1    Router Hardware
            2    The Environment around your Router
            3    IP. Ethernet and Telephony Basics
            4    Erbium - an Extranet Router
            5    Zinc - A Frame Relay Router
            6    Oxygen - Internet Router
            7    Californium - Satellite Office Router
            8    Hafnium - Internet Services Router

            Appendix A ...... Helpful links
            Appendix B ...... Building the Linux kernel
            Appendix C ...... Testing Strategies and VM Ware
            Appendix D ...... Ethics and other Considerations
            Appendix E ...... GNU General Public Licence

One of the things I always hear about from the Linux community is "Save money .. use a Linux box as your router". The British business community always tell me to "Spend money !! Throw it into an expensive hardware router and don't even worry about it !". Faced with this we now pick up Linux Routers and start to read it.

What is it that this particular book has to offer you ? On the back cover there is a short list of the what's inside.....

There's a lot of useful information in this publication. Some of it is based around the kind of common sense ideas that most system administrators take for granted ..... or do they ? The author says in the front of his book that he needed to write a HOWTO to document things that related to his use of Linux. He says that he tried to record some of his own silly mistakes in the book so that you won't make them yourself. He also took the time to write to me to explain that there are one or two mistakes and you can get hold of the corrections from...

http://mancill.com/linuxrouters/errata.html

So, you should be able to understand that the book in question is a high quality publication that will be a great deal of help for you when you want to build a router around Linux software. The author would like to get some feedback from the people who read his book so please do have a look at the web page above.

The preface starts by explaining that the author had the opportunity to go to a lecture by RMS in 1998. Something that most of us have done at some time. We always find his lectures to be really interesting. He then goes on to the introduction where he explains that router configuration is an "arcane art" possessed by the few. Didn't know I was so much alone :) The introduction is also the place where we are asked .... Why a Linux Router ..... to which the answers are ... costs ... flexibility ... stability .... easy to administer .... and a few other well known facts that most of us are aware of.

The first chapter goes into routing building blocks. The person who is new to routing and Unix will most likely find this to be entirely useful. There is a short list of hardware that may or may not be useful. A short intro to the environment around the machine is also very helpful. So many of the business people that I've seen think that the computer that has all the companies records on it is just a rubbish bin for fag ends or used banana skins. You must have seen this at some time ? The second chapter goes into IP and Ethernet. This is a little bit like the kind of thing that you might find on a Linux training course and might even be good to read before taking the exam.

Chapters three to eight go into various routers that the author has worked on varying in configuration and size and complexity. This is the kind of thing that most people who have an interest in computers would like to know about. First hand experience of what to do with a range of situations that occur on most networks at one time or another. You can get this kind of advice from LUG discussion lists out there on the net but a book printed on paper can be so much more useful. You don't need to plug it into the wall either.