Mark Allen Weiss did a superb job at explaining the very abstract material. I think every person interested in computer Science should read.
Complete book for the understanding how the Internet routing is done. In this book, the author makes a difficult subject easy to understand. The diagrams and solutions at the end of the book are extremely helpful in solving real-world problems.
Good reference, maybe. Not very readable!
My Operating Systems course used this book and we were assigned chapters to read every week. It was incredibly painful. This book does not read well at all. The ideas aren't very well motivated. Many times, Stallings just enumerates a list of alternate strategies for solving a problem without talking AT ALL about how the strategies came or why we should think about all these different strategies in the first place. He just lists and describes them. Very dry.
I eventually stopped reading the book and just used it as a reference when doing our open book online quizzes. This worked well. It's easy to find specific information ("How does Round Robin Scheduling work?") and the explanations are reasonably clear and concise. But if you're trying to actually read it sequentially to get the general idea, you're in for some pain (and sleepiness).
A good book for the newbie (like me)and the expert alike. Alot of people could save alot of time and alot of sleepless nights, not to mention alot of frantic email to security mailing lists, by reading this book. IMHO without a doubt the most readable and enjoyable tech oriented manual I have ever read. Worth every penny.