For advanced undergraduates or graduate students who have taken a basic computer networking course.

This unique network system design book shows how to build the bridges, switches, routers, firewalls, etc. that are the building blocks of today's Internet. This text, broken into four major sections-quick review of basics, packet processing, traditional protocol processing systems, network processors, and an example network processor-covers the concepts, principles, hardware and software architectures that underlie the design and implementation of network systems. This book provides the first overview of network processor technology.