This book serves the practitioner. Its wide discussion of data network enhancements and design is built upon a thorough introduction of generic and specific data networks, focusing at length on transmission limitations, protocols and how they work, and questions of standards and related topics. The book covers local area networks (LANs) based on IEEE and ANSI standards, and wide area networks (WANs) built around TCP/IP, SNA, and OSI related protocols.

It also covers VSAT (very small aperture terminal) satellite networks for data connectivity, and frame relay and SMDS for the interconnection of LANs over long distances.

The reader will share the benefits of the author's extensive experience, detailing actual implementation methods for enterprise networks, considering particular corporate and government requirements, describing wiring concepts and specific models, and providing comparisons between different systems in terms of performance and complexity.

Throughout, data communication is incorporated into the bigger picture of telecommunications, including the public switched digital network (PSDN), questions of high-capacity transmission media such as fiber optics, wire pair, and microwave and satellite communications. There is emphasis on the trend toward the integration of data, voice, and image into a single telecommunication system - popularly termed multimedia communications.