BKBSFRRL.RVW 931125 Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. Kelly Ford, Promotion/Publicity Coordinator P.O. Box 520 26 Prince Andrew Place Don Mills, Ontario M3C 2T8 416-447-5101 fax: 416-443-0948 or Tiffany Moore, Publicity tiffanym@aw.com John Wait, Editor, Corporate and Professional Publishing johnw@aw.com 1 Jacob Way Reading, MA 01867-9984 800-822-6339 617-944-3700 Fax: (617) 944-7273 5851 Guion Road Indianapolis, IN 46254 800-447-2226 "The Basics Book of Frame Relay", 0-201-56377-0 The preface states that this is an easy-to-read introduction to frame relay for busy communications professionals who presumably want to know something about the new technology besides the fact that it is generating a lot of interest. Fine. I fit the bill perfectly. I'm a communications (specifically *data* communications) professional. I'm busy. Let's get to the frame relay. Not so fast. First, we have an introduction that wants to tell me I should be interested in frame relay. Look, I got the book, didn't I? Then, we have a chapter one which wants to tell me what a "protocol" is, and about packet switching. Pack it in, guys: I'm a professional, remember? Then, we get another *two* chapters of sales pitches! Buried in the verbiage, there is a *bit* of information about frame relay: -it has higher throughput than X.25 (how? less error correction and recovery); -you can connect anything to it (how? probably the same way you do now-- with difficulty); -you can connect voice to it (maybe. or maybe that's *cell* relay, or ATM); -it has faster response time (how? don't know); -it has higher throughput, again (how? by letting you use more bandwidth, if it is available. Huh.) On the other hand, it takes less than an hour to read. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1993 BKBSFRRL.RVW 931125 ====================== DECUS Canada Communications, Desktop, Education and Security group newsletters Editor and/or reviewer ROBERTS@decus.ca, RSlade@sfu.ca, Rob Slade at 1:153/733 Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" (Oct. '94) Springer-Verlag