Wireless sensor networks promise an unprecedented fine-grained
interface between the virtual and physical worlds. They are one of the
most rapidly developing new information technologies, with applications
in a wide range of fields including industrial process control,
security and surveillance, environmental sensing, and structural health
monitoring. This book is motivated by the urgent need to provide a
comprehensive and organized survey of the field.Ideal for researchers
and designers seeking to create new algorithms and protocols, and
engineers implementing integrated solutions, it also contains many
exercises and can be used by graduate students taking courses in
Networks.

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Millions of computers around the world today are connected by the
Internet, so why is it still so hard to hook up a few PCs in you own
home? Whether you want to share an Internet connection, install WiFi,
or maybe just cut down on the number of printers you own, home
networks are supposed to help make your life easier. Instead, most
aspiring home networkers get lost in a confusing maze of terms and
technologies: 802.11g, Fast Ethernet, Cat 5 cable (or was it Cat 5e?),
Powerline, and on and confusingly on. That’s where Home
Networking: The Missing Manual comes in. Using clear language,
straightforward explanations, and a dash of humor, this book shows you
how to do everything you need to set up a home network. Coverage
includes: WiFi, Ethernet, or Powerline? There are several kinds of
digital pipes that you can use to create your network, and none of them
have friendly names. This book tells you what they are, explains
the pros and cons of each, and helps you figure out what you need to
buy, and how to install it. Windows and Mac info included. Half
the battle in home networking takes place after you’ve bought your gear
and plugged it in. That’s because the routers, network
adapters,
and cables that you need get you only part way towards networking
nirvana. Whether you’ve got PCs or Macs or both, you’ll need help
tweaking your computers’ settings if you want to get all your machines
talking to each other. This book covers most known operating
system flavors, including Windows XP, 2000, Me, and 98, and Mac OS X
and OS 9. Fun things to do with your network. The real fun starts
once your network is up and running. This book shows you how to do much
more than simply share an Internet connection and a printer.
You’ll learn how to stream music from your PCs to your stereo, how to
display pictures on your TV, how to hook up game consoles to your
network, and more! Most important, this book helps you understand the
difference between what you need to know to create and use your
home network and what’s best left to those looking for a career as a
system administrator. In Home Networking: The Missing Manual you’ll find everything you need to get your network running-and nothing more.

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Based on extensive interviews with industry leaders, The Holy Grail of Data Storage Management provides a concise glimpse of the present state and future direction of enterprise databases. This authoritative and enthusiastically written text can benefit any IT professional working with databases at the department or enterprise level.

Best at displaying the current state of enterprise database implementation, including a diagnosis of the trend toward centrally managed data stores, this book focuses specifically on dedicated database networks (SANs) and Network Attached Storage (NAS) appliances. Additionally, this title is a veritable primer for virtually every database standard (old and new), including SCSI-2, Fibre Channel, new storage options, optical-magneto (including DVD) standards, and even tape backups.

A section on RAID offered here is truly an excellent introduction to the strengths (and limitations) of different RAID architectures. It also surveys new options for enterprise storage (both SANs and NAS’s) and defines a management process for getting control of central data stores on the enterprise. The book is particularly good at pointing out the problem of sharing databases on heterogeneous environments that use both Unix and Windows NT. It closes with emerging vendor-specific standards for universal data storage (such as Sun’s StoreX) that might solve the problem once and for all (though the author tends to see universal initiatives as a sort of holy grail).

Both a guide to the state of the art in enterprise databases and a roadmap for the future, The Holy Grail of Data Storage Management serves an invaluable need for any manager or administrator who works with enterprise databases. This book’s intelligent presentation of old and new technologies, along with many valuable product listings, can be a useful asset as your organization brings its databases into the next century.

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Essential System Administration,3rd Edition is the definitive guide for Unix system administration, covering all the fundamental and essential tasks required to run such divergent Unix systems as AIX, FreeBSD, HP-UX, Linux, Solaris, Tru64 and more. Essential System Administration provides a clear, concise, practical guide to the real-world issues that anyone responsible for a Unix system faces daily. The new edition of this indispensable reference has been fully updated for all the latest operating systems. Even more importantly, it has been extensively revised and expanded to consider the current system administrative topics that administrators need most. Essential System Administration,3rd Edition covers: DHCP, USB devices, the latest automation tools, SNMP and network management, LDAP, PAM, and recent security tools and techniques. Essential System Administration is comprehensive. But what has made this book the guide system administrators turn to over and over again is not just the sheer volume of valuable information it provides, but the clear, useful way the information is presented. It discusses the underlying higher-level concepts, but it also provides the details of the procedures needed to carry them out. It is not organized around the features of the Unix operating system, but around the various facets of a system administrator’s job. It describes all the usual administrative tools that Unix provides, but it also shows how to use them intelligently and efficiently. Whether you use a standalone Unix system, routinely provide administrative support for a larger shared system, or just want an understanding of basic administrative functions, Essential System Administration is for you. This comprehensive and invaluable book combines the author’s years of practical experience with technical expertise to help you manage Unix systems as productively and painlessly as possible.

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