Understanding Local Area Networks provides practical considerations for installation, administration, and maintenance networks. Although the book deals primarily with local area networks, an introduction to telecommunications and wide area networking is also provided, including a chapter devoted to the Internet protocol, TCP/IP. An introduction to public carrier protocols such as ISDN, ATM, Frame Relay, and ADSL is also presented. Additional chapters cover small network design consideration, network security, troubleshooting, and performance tuning.