Keeping that in mind, the authors do a great job of covering the basics of networking and the Internet. Beginners will find a lot of this information helpful, especially the section on communication fundamentals. Information about setting up and installing Windows NT4.0 is a little skimpy but you wouldn't expect much more from a book specializing in Internet Server. Experienced network engineers who are unfamiliar with Windows NT 4.0 may find the chapters concerning NT's implementation of networking protocols and services interesting. But Microsoft's Windows NT 4.0 Resource Kit or Mastering Windows NT Server 4 by Mark Minasi (Network Press-Sybex) would probably better serve them if they wanted to learn more about NT. One interesting point: the authors tout NT's security and how useful those security features are for an Internet Server, which is ironic considering the number of recent security breaches found in NT 4.0.

The CD-ROM included with the book contains lots of software. Especially interesting was the trial version of Executive Software International's Diskeeper disk defragmentation utility. NT 4.0 has no built in disk defragger and Norton NT Tools doesn't contain one (Norton Utilities 2.0 for Windows NT does, however) so it was great to be able to give Diskeeper a test drive. There are many shareware programs, some useful, some not. It is likely that you will find something of interest in the collection.

The book's introduction to internetworking and basic communications concepts was a little long. Although some beginners may find this intro material interesting, it makes for a bit of a slow read for those with a little NT and network experience. Once you get past the "fluff" though, it does do a fair job of helping you through the various aspects of getting NT running and setting up Internet Information Server on your system.