The purpose of Michael W Lucas with Networking for System Administrators is to teach System Administrators the basics of networking. The goal, as the author stated, is not to make sysadmins networking professionals but to equip them to take better care of themselves (Kindle page 114/2627).
The major topics of the book are: 1. Network Layers and how to troubleshoot them, 2. Ethernet, 3. IPv4 and IPv6. 5. TCP/IP, ports, connection state, 6. Packet sniffing and 7. Filtering input and output traffic. Perhaps what distinguishes this book from others is that the author has i) 20 years of experience wearing both hats of System Administrator and Network Engineer; and ii) the style is very practical, direct, and sometimes funny.
For me, as a System Administrator, the author achieved his goal: I was able to learn the bases of networking with the material covered. Some of the networking concepts I was already exposed to before, however, I found very enriching the discussion of how to troubleshoot each network layer.
Compared to the best book of the field (Unix and Linux System Administration Handbook; a book that I regard as the best book for System Administrators given its comprehensive coverage of sysadmin topics), I think this book does a good job. The strength of Networking for System Administrators is in the tools it gives you to debug network problems. Not only does the book explain the network layers in a practical way, but it also explains and teaches you the tools you need to debug these issues, specifically: ARP, ping, traceroute, netstat, netcat and tcpdump/wireshark. This is something that is missing in the Unix and Linux System Administration Handbook, and hence something that makes this book special.
My main takeaway from this book is the following little table, which explains how to debug each layer in the OSI model.
To conclude, I recommend this book to all System Administrators. Michael Lucas does a great job teaching network fundamentals with this book. The book is written by someone with experience, so it goes straight to what is important: how to troubleshoot the network.
