NOTICE: The samples referenced on this page are part of The TCP/IP Guide and protected under United States and international copyright law. You are granted authorization to download and examine the documents to determine if The TCP/IP Guide suits your needs. Other than this use, no part of these documents may be reproduced, distributed, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means—be it electronic, mechanical, photographic, magnetic or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the author. If you disagree with these terms, do not download the samples.

Some important notes about these sample documents:

• Adobe Acrobat Reader Required: You must have the Adobe Acrobat PDF Reader, version 5 or higher, to read these sample documents. You can download the latest version for free from Adobe's Web site.
• Context of Samples: Some of the individual topic samples cover advanced subjects and are included to show the depth of detail in The TCP/IP Guide. If you are new to networking, please do not be concerned if these seem hard to understand; this is largely because you are seeing a topic without the other topics that go with it in its section. All difficult concepts in The TCP/IP Guide are introduced thoroughly with overview information that allows nearly anyone to understand how the technologies work. Again, please refer to the free online version of The TCP/IP Guide to see the context of the samples.
• Hyperlinks Non-Functional: Blue text is used in The TCP/IP Guide for hyperlinks to topics, sections, tables and figures. These links are shown but most are not functional in the samples.
• Variations From Complete Document: There may be very minor differences between these samples and the corresponding topics in the complete Guide.

The following are complete sections from The TCP/IP Guide, each covering between 15 and 20 pages of material:

1. Fundamental Network Characteristics: A full section from the Networking Fundamentals chapter that shows how The TCP/IP Guide provides essential information for those new to networking. This section describes protocols in general terms, differentiates circuit-switching and packet-switching networks, discusses connectionless and connection-oriented protocols, explains how messages are named and formatted, covers different types of addressing, and contrasts client/server and peer-to-peer networking.
2. IP Subnetting: Practical Subnet Design and Address Determination Example: This five-topic section describes in detail, using examples and diagrams, how to subnet an IP network. It covers the design tradeoff in choosing the number of bits for the subnet ID, determining the subnet mask, deriving subnet identifiers and addresses, and finding host addresses for each subnet. (Note that preceding this section in the full Guide is another section that thoroughly covers subnetting concepts, for those new to IP addressing.)

The following are four individual topics, with a brief description of each:

1. Data Encapsulation, Protocol Data Units (PDUs) and Service Data Units (SDUs): A selection from the discussion of the OSI Reference Model that describes the OSI terminology for messages, and how data is encapsulated as it is transferred between protocol layers.
2. IP Datagram General Format: A detailed description of the datagram format of the critically important Internet Protocol (IP). This sample shows how The TCP/IP Guide puts tables and diagrams to good use in explaining complex technologies and concepts.
3. Mobile IP Overview, History and Motivation: An example of an overview topic, which shows how The TCP/IP Guide introduces and provides a general explanation of a technology, in this case, Mobile IP.
4. DNS Basic Name Resolution Techniques: Iterative and Recursive Resolution: A discussion of the differences between the two main techniques used for name resolution in the TCP/IP Domain Name System (DNS).

If there are any problems with these samples or you have comments on them, feel free to contact me.

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