Book excerpt: The authors of Practical Network Design Techniques, Second Edition: A Complete Guide for WANs and LANs build upon the popular first edition by combining pre-existing network design fundamentals with new material on LAN devices and topologies, wireless local networks, and LAN internetworking issues. This new edition has two parts. The first part focuses on wide area networks; the second, which is entirely new, focuses on local area networks. Because Ethernet emerged victorious in the LAN war, the second section pays particular attention to Ethernet design and performance characteristics. The volume retains much valuable information from the first edition, and integrates and prominently highlights WAN information that is also relevant to the LAN design process. To maximize the book's utility, the authors include a number of practical networking problems and their solutions, along with examples of methods needed to perform economic comparisons among differing communications services and hardware configurations. The second edition provides a thorough understanding of major network design problems and is an invaluable reference for data communications professionals.