By starting at the application-layer and working down to the protocol stack, Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach Featuring the Internet provides a motivational treatment of important concepts for networking students. Based on the rationale that once a student understands the applications of networks they can understand the network services needed to support these applications, this book takes a "top-down" approach where students are first exposed to a concrete application and then drawn into some of the deeper issues of networking.

Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach Featuring the Internet focuses on the Internet as opposed to addressing it as just one of many computer network technologies. Students are enormously curious about what is "under the hood" of the Internet, creating an extremely motivational vehicle for teaching fundamental computer networking concepts.

This text features a comprehensive companion website which includes the entire text online. It allows for direct access to some of the best Internet sites relating to computer networks and Internet protocols. The website has many interactive features, including direct access to the Traceroute program, direct access to search engines for Internet Drafts, Java applets that animate difficult concepts, and direct streaming audio. Finally, the website makes it possible to update the material to keep up-to-date with this rapidly changing field.