[心平气和读经典]The TCP/IP Guide(001)

The TCP/IP Guide
[Page 40,41]

Introduction To the TCP/IP Guide | TCP/IP指南概述

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As I sit here writing this introductory material a few weeks before finishing off a multi-year project culminating in this TCP/IP Guide, I reflect on how funny life can be. Prior to a few years ago, I never really thought of myself as a writer. I have no training as an author, and my interests have always been in computers. I always assumed that I would end up in a technical job, such as computer programming or hardware design.

几周前，当我端坐在这里书写这个概述材料的时候，不禁舒了一口气，一个多年的项目(TCP/IP 指南)终于完成了，生活原来是如此有趣。几年前，我从来没有真正意识到我是一个作家。我没有受过作为一个作家的专业培训，我的兴趣也一直是计算机。我总是认为我将终身从事技术工作，比如计算机编程或者硬件设计。

Perhaps ironically, then, it was my interest in personal computers that led to my writing The PC Guide in 1997. After I put the first version of that site online, I received many compliments on its usefulness. This didn't surprise me, since the material was of course designed to be useful. :-) What shocked me were all the comments I received about how people appreciated my writing. They said they found my material easy to understand, and some said they had even read through textbooks but never understood the concepts they explained until they encountered my site. I discovered that I perhaps I had a talent I had never before considered; more, I realized that it felt good to dissect a difficult technical subject and help people understand it.

很可能具有讽刺意味的是，在1997年因为对个人电脑的兴趣，我编写了个人电脑(PC)指南。在我把个人电脑指南的第一个版本放到网上之后，我收到了很多赞扬，大家说很实用。我一点都不感到惊讶，因为那些材料当然就是为了有用而设计的。:-)令我感到震惊的是，我收到的所有评论都是对我的写作表示赞赏。他们说我写的材料很容易理解，有的还说他们读过教科书，但是搞不懂那些晦涩的概念，直到访问了我的网站之后才恍然大悟。我发现我也许有一种从前从未意识到的天赋；此外，我还意识到剖析一门难学的技术学科并帮助人们理解它是一件大大的好事。

In early 2001 I decided that I wanted to embark on a new writing project to go along with the PC materials I had written in The PC Guide. I felt then, as I do now, that the future of information technology lies not so much in bigger and faster computers, but in better ways of exchanging information between them. I wanted to know more about networking and internetworking. So, I decided to create a Networking Guide to complement my PC Guide. I thought that this would take about six months.

在2001年初，我决定开始一个新的写作项目，与编写个人电脑材料同时进行。我觉得，正如我现在所认同的，信息技术的未来不在于更大更快的计算机，而在于更好地进行信息交换。我想了解关于网络和网络互联的更多知识。于是我决定撰写一个网络指南，作为个人电脑指南的补充。我当时认为完成网络指南的话需要大约六个月。

Remember what I said above about life being funny? :-) Well, as soon as I embarked on my project to create a Networking Guide, I realized that I had opened a virtual Pandora's Box. I had never realized just how large a topic networking was; there were literally hundreds of different protocols, technologies, algorithms, concepts and devices to learn about. These were all interconnected in a myriad of ways, and it was hard to explain how one protocol or technology worked without first explaining another one. The amount of complexity was amazing.

还记得我在前面说过的生活很有趣吗? :-) 当我开始网络指南的项目时，我意识到我已经打开了一个虚拟的潘多拉盒子。我从未意识到网络是一个多么大的话题;毫不夸张地说，有成百上千个不同的协议、技术、算法、概念和设备需要学习。这些东西都是以多种方式相互关联的，很难解释一种协议或技术是如何工作的而不需要首先解释另一种协议或技术。网络的复杂性那是相当地惊人！

To make matters worse, I found that it was very hard to find information about networks that really explained how everything worked. This seemed like an opportunity to me -- I decided that since so many people felt I did a good job explaining PC technology, that I should take a crack at networking. Once I accepted that it would take more than six months, I figured I should plan on up to two years to get this writing project completed. Well... life is even funnier than I imagined. :-) Fast forward from early 2001 to August 2003, and I find myself at my desk, looking over my writing project. I realize that I have been at this now for two-and-a-half years, yet due to my desire to cover as much as possible, I have at least a year's more work to go.

更糟糕的是，我发现很难找到真正能够说明一切是如何运作的有关网络的信息。对我来说，这似乎是一个机会 -- 我觉得既然有那么多人认为我在解释电脑技术方面做得很好，那么我也应该在解释网络技术上有所突破。一旦我接受这一写作项目将需要超过六个月才能完成这一事实，我想我应该计划用两年来完成这个写作项目。好...生活比我想象的还要有趣。：-）从2001年初到2003年8月，时间过得飞快，我坐在办公桌旁看着我的写作项目发呆，我意识到我已经在这里呆了两年半了，我至少还有一年的工作要做，因为我想尽可能多地在书中涵盖更多的内容。

I began to feel burnt out from working on this new Networking Guide for such a long time, during which it has existed only in my mind and on my PC's hard disk drive. Even though part of me wanted to wait to finish the entire Networking Guide and publish it all at once, a larger part of me felt the need to publish at least some of what I had already written. I looked over the material I had completed, and realized that most of the TCP/IP material was done. I felt TCP/IP was a topic that was particularly important in the Internet era, and one that I could cover as a standalone Guide. A few more months' work, and the TCP/IP Guide was born.

我开始感到筋疲力尽，因为我在这个新的网络指南上工作了这么长的时间。在此期间，它只存在于我的脑海中，存在于我个人电脑的硬盘上。尽管我的一部分读者想等着我完成整个网络指南并马上予以出版，但我的大部分读者觉得至少需要出版一些我已经写过的东西。我查看了我完成的材料，意识到大部分TCP/IP材料都已经完成了。我觉得TCP/IP在互联网时代是一个特别重要的话题，可以把它作为一个独立的指南来展开。几个月后，TCP/IP指南诞生了。

That's the story of the creation of an improbable TCP/IP Guide by an improbable author. :-) You may look at the 1600-odd pages in this Guide and wonder at how this could be only a part of the document that I originally began. But that is in fact the case, and should give you an idea of just how large the complete project would have been had I waited to publish it in whole. Perfectionists should never start open-ended projects!

这就是一个不可思议的作者创作一个不太可能会完成的TCP/IP指南的故事。您可以查看本指南中的1600多页，并可能想知道这可能是我最初开始的文档的一部分。但事实上就是这样的，如果我等着把它全部出版的话，你无法想象整个项目的规模有多大。完美主义者永远不要开始一个有始有终的项目！

So, after nearly three years in all, the TCP/IP Guide is complete, and I am pretty pleased with how it came out. I feel that the breadth and depth of the coverage is unparalleled in any other single TCP/IP resource, and I have worked very hard to make my descriptions understandable and enjoyable to read. I spent many weeks designing the layout of the Guide, and many more creating and fine-tuning hundreds of examples and diagrams to help illustrate most of the technologies and concepts that underlie TCP/IP. Add to this the many benefits of electronic publication, such as a clickable table of contents, hyperlinks and a real-time search index, and I think this Guide will be of value to both beginners and advanced users alike. I hope you find it useful.

于是，耗时将近三年后，TCP/IP指南终于大功告成，我对本书的问世感到非常满意。与其他任何一个单一的TCP/IP资源相比，本书的广度和深度都是无与伦比的。为了让读者能够轻松理解本书的内容和阅读愉快，我一直非常努力。我花了好几个星期来设计布局，创建和微调数百个例子和图表来帮助说明大部分TCP/IP技术和概念。也增加了电子出版物的很多方便之处，如可点击的表格内容，超链接和实时搜索索引，我认为这个指南对初学者和高级用户都是有价值的。希望您觉得受用。