Computer Communications 27 (2004) 905–906
www.elsevier.com/locate/comcom
Book Review
Juniper and Cisco Routing: Policy and Protocols for
Multivendor IP Networks
Walter J. Goralski (Ed.); Wiley, New York, October 2002,
ISBN 0-471-21592-9
This is a huge volume dedicated to the ever-interesting
subject of routing in the Internet. The book is the initial
volume on a series of texts on multi-vendor routing in
the Internet. As such it sets the stage for the whole series
by providing a comprehensive coverage of the most
important routing protocols in use today in the Internet:
RIP, OSPF, IS-IS, and BGP. A distinguishing aspect of
the book is the multi-vendor dimension as indicated in
the book title. Moreover, while other books concentrate
in the nuts-and-bolts of routing protocols, this
book contains these details as well as the subtle
subject of routing policies. Routing policies are needed
most by sophisticated network administrators to
determine which route advertisements are accepted by a
router or advertised to other routers. As such they
determine to a large extent the overall performance of
the network.
The book spans a multitude of subjects and is divided into
five logical parts. The first part contains some basic material
covering the history and technical details about the Internet,
the web, and the TCP/IP protocol suite. This part is a warmup
phase for the entire book (and seemingly the whole series).
The Internet is composed of hierarchical interconnected sets
of autonomous systems (AS), and the routing protocols have
a similar hierarchy: those protocols responsible for deliver-
ing packets within an AS; the interior routing protocols; and
those interconnecting the AS’s together; the exterior routing
protocols. The second part is on interior routing protocols
including RIP, OSPF, and IS-IS. The third part is solely on
the BGP protocol, seemingly the only standards-based
exterior routing protocol used today in the Internet. The
last two parts of the book are on the subject of routing
policies: one part is on policies for OSPF and IS-IS (RIP
offers no such features). The last part is on BGP policies
including basic policies and advanced techniques such as
‘BGP Communities’ and ‘Route Dampening’.
The author has an eloquent ‘on target’ writing style. Even
if one is expert on a certain subject, it is usually valuable to
read what Goralski has to say about it. For example,
I have been teaching the TCP/IP protocol suite and IP
subnetting/supernetting and all that but I found these parts of
0140-3664/$ - see front matter q 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.comcom.2003.12.008
the book a valuable and interesting reading. Two problems
with the book, however, are: the need for better proof-reading
as many typos are found in the book and sometimes the
sentence style is ‘too nerdy’ that new comers to the routing
area may find difficult to comprehend.
The book contains both theory and practice labs. Each
protocol or protocol policy is described in good details
including packet formats, message semantics, options,
etc. After each basics chapter, a practice-oriented chapter
shows how to configure the protocol or policy on Cisco
and Juniper routers in well-structured lab experiments.
The example networks used are particularly interesting.
(Reviewer Tip: The fact that the author constructs some
of the example networks, even those very complex
networks of chapters 16 and 17, with Ethernet/fast
Ethernet interfaces is inspiring for those schools with
low budgets as one could build such networks using
networked Linux PCs with a package called Zebra. Zebra
has the advantage of being an open-source software that
has full implementation of RIP, OSPF, and BGP, and an
almost identical configuration interface to that of Cisco
routers).
This reviewer thinks that the most interesting parts of
the book were: (1) Chapter 1 and particularly the part
introducing ISP peering and settlements and the role the
routing policies in this complex process; (2) the two
chapters on the architecture and basic configuration of
both the Cisco and Juniper routers where one learns
the differences between the two vendors products; (3) the
case for OSPF against IS-IS. The book covers the
advantages and disadvantages for each. It points out why
some ISP’s choose IS-IS as the preferred interior routing
protocol (and rightly so in many situations); and most
significantly (4) the parts about the BGP protocol and its
policies. Under the influence of some previous reading, I
had the (false) impression that BGP is the epitome of
complexity of the routing protocols. To my surprise, after
going through chapters 13 and 14, I found BGP to be
‘in-principle’ a strikingly simple protocol that can only
be as complex as the policies used to manage it (at least
it is less complex than OSPF). What could be complex
about BGP is how to tune its policies to achieve a certain
goal with regards to peering and handling of transit
traffic for large ISP’s.
As an academic, I would have appreciated that some
part of the book discussing future issues such as IPv6,
906 Book Review / Computer Communications 27 (2004) 905–906

traffic engineering, and (interdomain) quality of service Khaled Fouad Elsayed

support.
In summary, this book is both a tutorial and a reference,
an introduction to routing protocols as well as a book about
advanced routing policies. Whether you are a novice or
expert, there is something to be learned from this book.
Department of Electronics and Communications
Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University,
Gamma Street, Giza 12613, Egypt
Tel.: þ 20-10-525-2907; fax: þ 20-25-723-486.
E-mail address: khaled@ieee.org