Network Maintenance and Troubleshooting Guide Field-Tested Solutions for Everyday Problems, Second Edition Neal Allen The 100% practical, real-world guide to anticipating, finding, and solving network problems—fast! Real-life networks don’t always behave “by the book.” Troubleshooting them requires practical intuition that normally comes only with experience. In this book, Fluke Networks’ Neal Allen brings together all that hard-won, hands-on insight: everything you need to discover what’s really happening in your network, so you can anticipate and fix problems before users even notice them. Writing for network technicians and administrators at all levels, Allen presents an approach to troubleshooting that has been proven in networks of all kinds, no matter how complex. He introduces indispensable triage and troubleshooting techniques for everything from copper and fiber cabling to IPv6, and presents unparalleled guidance on identifying and resolving problems at the MAC Layer. He illustrates his advice with diagrams, tables, and screen captures from Fluke Networks’ market-leading instruments. Throughout this book, Allen also offers practical summaries of each of today’s core networking technologies, making it an ideal complement to any network certification study guide. Coverage includes Using the OSI model to more efficiently troubleshoot networks layer by layer Copper and fiber-optic cabling: theory, operation, and troubleshooting Media Access Control (MAC) Layer: Ethernet theory and operation Identifying and resolving problems related to IPv4 and IPv6 protocols Preventing problems before they occur Discovering device behavior Troubleshooting switches Using a protocol analyzer more successfully Creating network documentation that helps you more efficiently prevent and resolve problems Road tested by thousands of Fluke Networks customers, this book’s first edition became the best-kept secret resource for sysadmins, netadmins, and support technicians fortunate enough to discover it. Now, Allen has thoroughly updated his classic for today’s networks. If you’re responsible for maintaining one of those networks, you’ll find this new Second Edition even more indispensable. Neal Allen is a senior staff engineer in the Fluke Networks’ Technical Assistance Center (TAC) focusing on escalated problems. He has been involved in designing, installing, and troubleshooting networks for nearly 20 years. Allen has served on Interop’s trade show Network Operations Center (NOC) team since 1993, troubleshooting show-floor problems at the Las Vegas and Atlanta Interop trade shows, and helped support and troubleshoot the network for the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. His responsibilities currently include product feature specification and beta testing, remote and onsite problem solving, and providing training and sales support worldwide. informit.com/aw Cover design by Louisa Adair Cover photography from Image Source / Getty Images

Reduce organizational cybersecurity risk and build comprehensive WiFi, private cellular, and IOT security solutions Wireless Security Architecture: Designing and Maintaining Secure Wireless for Enterprise offers readers an essential guide to planning, designing, and preserving secure wireless infrastructures. It is a blueprint to a resilient and compliant architecture that responds to regulatory requirements, reduces organizational risk, and conforms to industry best practices. This book emphasizes WiFi security, as well as guidance on private cellular and Internet of Things security. Readers will discover how to move beyond isolated technical certifications and vendor training and put together a coherent network that responds to contemporary security risks. It offers up-to-date coverage—including data published for the first time—of new WPA3 security, Wi-Fi 6E, zero-trust frameworks, and other emerging trends. It also includes: Concrete strategies suitable for organizations of all sizes, from large government agencies to small public and private companies Effective technical resources and real-world sample architectures Explorations of the relationships between security, wireless, and network elements Practical planning templates, guides, and real-world case studies demonstrating application of the included concepts Perfect for network, wireless, and enterprise security architects, Wireless Security Architecture belongs in the libraries of technical leaders in firms of all sizes and in any industry seeking to build a secure wireless network.

We share our modern world with bots – chatbots to converse with, roombots to clean our houses, spambots to fill our e-mail inboxes, and medibots to assist our surgeons. This book is about computer game bots, virtual companions who accompany us in virtual worlds or sharpen our fighting skills. These bots must be believable, that is human players should believe they are interacting with entities operating at a human level – bots are more fun if they behave like we do. This book shows how to create believable bots that play computer games, and it discusses the implications of making them appear human. The chapters in this book present the state of the art in research on and development of game bots, and they also look beyond the design aspects to address deep questions: Is a bot that plays like a person intelligent? Does it have emotions? Is it conscious? The topic is inherently interdisciplinary, and the work draws from research and practice in many fields, such as design, creativity, entertainment, and graphics; learning, psychology, and sociology; artificial intelligence, embodiment, agents, machine learning, robotics, human–computer interaction, and artificial life; cognition and neuroscience; and evolutionary computing. The contributing authors are among the leading researchers and developers in this field, and most of the examples and case studies involve analysis of commercial products. The book will be of value to graduate students and academic researchers in artificial intelligence, and to engineers charged with the design of entertaining games.

It’s spring in Ivyland . . . Debut novelist Miles Klee takes a landscape of drugs, decay, loss and, perhaps, hope, and manages to make the ensemble wryly funny: something only a few notable contemporaries such as Jeff Vandermeer and Michael Chabon have been able to do. Post-urban New Jersey is instantly recognizable in this interlinked series of short vignettes. . . . and Lev’s living room is puddles of water and sun, and a bunch of those furry caterpillars are hauling themselves from surface to surface. Populated by a bumbling, murderous citizenry of corrupt cops, innocents, ravenous addicts, lovesick geniuses, and cynical adventurers, Ivyland operates in the shadow of a giant pharmaceutical corporation that thrives on people’s weaknesses . . . and may have an even more sinister agenda. It’s our world, only a bit more extreme, and lovingly, precisely depicted with the adept skills native to a master of dark humor.