[SC.LUG] Unix utilities made easy...

[Richard Smedley]

A review of ``The Story About Ping (Picture Puffin Books (Paperback))''
from:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0140502416/ref=cm_rev_sort/102-0720723-3957735?show=-votes&v=glance&vi=customer-reviews&s=books&Go.x=14&Go.y=12&Go=Go
or (re-posted by someone else) at:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140502416/qid=1089722059/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_10_1/202-6296770-6689417

6781 of 6974 people found the following review helpful:

5 out of 5 stars
Ping! I love that duck!, January 25, 2000 
	Reviewer: John E. Fracisco from El Segundo, CA USA
PING! The magic duck!

Using deft allegory, the authors have provided an insightful and
intuitive explanation of one of Unix's most venerable networking
utilities. Even more stunning is that they were clearly working with a
very early beta of the program, as their book first appeared in 1933,
years (decades!) before the operating system and network infrastructure
were finalized.

The book describes networking in terms even a child could understand,
choosing to anthropomorphize the underlying packet structure. The ping
packet is described as a duck, who, with other packets (more ducks),
spends a certain period of time on the host machine (the wise-eyed
boat). At the same time each day (I suspect this is scheduled under
cron), the little packets (ducks) exit the host (boat) by way of a
bridge (a bridge). From the bridge, the packets travel onto the internet
(here embodied by the Yangtze River).

The title character -- er, packet, is called Ping. Ping meanders around
the river before being received by another host (another boat). He
spends a brief time on the other boat, but eventually returns to his
original host machine (the wise-eyed boat) somewhat the worse for wear.

If you need a good, high-level overview of the ping utility, this is the
book. I can't recommend it for most managers, as the technical aspects
may be too overwhelming and the basic concepts too daunting.

Problems With This Book

As good as it is, The Story About Ping is not without its faults. There
is no index, and though the ping(8) man pages cover the command line
options well enough, some review of them seems to be in order. Likewise,
in a book solely about Ping, I would have expected a more detailed
overview of the ICMP packet structure.

But even with these problems, The Story About Ping has earned a place on
my bookshelf, right between Stevens' Advanced Programming in the Unix
Environment, and my dog-eared copy of Dante's seminal work on MS
Windows, Inferno. Who can read that passage on the Windows API
("Obscure, profound it was, and nebulous, So that by fixing on its
depths my sight -- Nothing whatever I discerned therein."), without
shaking their head with deep understanding. But I digress.