Packed with diagrams and illustrations, Communications & Systems delivers plain-English explanations of all the technical fundamentals -- and puts everything in context by addressing standards, regulations, and the real-world outlook for legacy, contemporary, and emerging technologies. In this unique overview, Ray Horak lucidly describes today's communications systems and networks -- voice, data, video, and multimedia -- and explains how they are likely to evolve and converge as we move further toward an information-based economy. Whether you're a communications pro who wants to gain some perspective or you just want to understand our increasingly wired and wireless world, this is the one book you need to see the big picture, with just the right amount of detail.

Living in an era of instant communication has certain drawbacks. Not too long ago, the living was simpler. People had one or two telephone numbers, a street address, and access to four or five television channels. Now, we have phone numbers for home, work, mobile phone, fax machine, and pager. We have multiple e-mail addresses. We have access to unlimited information over the Internet. With digital cable or a personal satellite dish, we choose from hundreds of television channels. The communication technology behind this revolution continues to evolve--becoming faster, cheaper, and more prolific. What technology is behind the scenes, and how does all of this information get delivered? That is the question that's answered by this remarkable tome, Ray Horak's Communications Systems & Networks.
Horak explains communication technologies in 15 chapters, using the growing convergence of voice, data, and video as the narrative thread that holds the book together. He starts at the beginning--telegraph and early telephone--and details the progression from analog voice signals to modern high-speed digital networks. Along the way, he emphasizes technical breadth. For exhaustive detail on any one subject, Horak enumerates relevant sources and suggests additional reading at the end of each chapter. This feature makes this book the ideal place to start when researching any communications topic. Another good thing about this book is its pragmatic approach to communications. Horak blends a high-level view of the subject with implementation and deployment issues, as well as the relative costs of different technologies.

This book is valuable for both engineers and managers. It's a perfect resource for inquisitive engineers who are well versed about one area of communications and want to explore the rest of the communications world. For a manager who wants a technical overview of a given subject, the depth is perfect--just enough knowledge to become dangerous.

The conversational style of the book also is a welcome touch. In contrast to technical books that require a can of Jolt to stay awake, Horak presents complex material concisely. Historical perspective is integrated with technical details, and reflects the author's many years of experience. Topics such as the Telecommunication Act of 1996 are explained in the context of technological change, and give the reader a comprehensive overview of virtually all communication technologies. This book is the perfect complement to such industry mainstays as Perlman's Interconnections, Comer's Internetworking with TCP/IP, and Tanenbaum's Computer Networks. --Pete Ostenson