Cisco Cookbook -- There are often many different ways to solve any given networking problem using Cisco devices, and some solutions are more effective than others. The pressing question for network engineers is which solution is the most appropriate for their situation. A good working configuration example can often save huge amounts of time. Cisco Cookbook gathers hundreds of examples of router configurations all in one place. Use O'Reilly's latest cookbook to solve all of your complex router configuration issues. A sample excerpt on Simple Network Management Protocol is available online.

All Software Should Be Network Aware -- Apple's original Human Interface Guidelines laid out the company's vision for a set of consistent approaches for GUI applications. Now that we're moving into the era of『software above the level of a single device,』we need something similar for network-aware applications. Here are some of the things Tim O'Reilly would like to see universally supported.

Cooking with Cisco, Part 2 -- In this second installment of a two-part recipe series excerpted from the Cisco Cookbook, Kevin Dooley and Ian Brown show you how to use a little-known IOS feature called IP Multicast Helper, as well as a simple way to ensure that your routers never send unimportant messages. For more delicious Cisco tidbits get your copy of the Cisco Cookbook.

Cooking with Cisco -- Learn about a feature called "Frame-Relay Traffic Shaping," which ensures your router won't overrun the capacity of the individual PVCs in a Frame Relay WAN, and pick up a script to use to automatically scan and analyze your log files, in these sample recipes from Kevin Dooley's and Ian Brown's Cisco Cookbook.

Point-to-Point Links -- Rob Flickenger offers some practical tips on wireless point-to-point networking, details he found useful when working on long-distance networks. These tips are excerpted from O'Reilly's Building Wireless Community Networks, 2nd Edition.

Asterisk: A Bare-Bones VoIP Example -- Asterisk is both an open source toolkit for telephony applications and a full-featured PBX application. Learn how to configure a simple telephone system with Asterisk in this tutorial by John Todd.

Security in IPv6 -- With security issues at an all-time high, it's not too early to begin reading about how internet security will change with IPv6, the first major upgrade of the Internet Protocol. Chapter 5 of IPv6 Essentials will take you through types of threats, IPv6 security elements, solutions, and much more. Requires an O'Reilly Network Safari Bookshelf subscription. Get your free trial here.

Sift, Stir, Code: O'Reilly Cookbooks -- Looking for the right ingredients to solve a programming problem? Look no further than O'Reilly Cookbooks. Each cookbook contains hundreds of programming recipes presented in a special Problem/Solution/Discussion format, and includes hundreds of scripts, programs, and command sequences you can use to solve specific dilemmas. Get your daily recipes and view our complete list of Programming Cookbooks for Geeks.

Automating Administrative Tasks -- A few simple shell scripts will bring reliability, regularity, and enhanced efficiency to the systems you administer. Learn how in Chapter 14 of Essential System Administration, 3rd Edition, available on the O'Reilly Network Safari Bookshelf. Get your free trial here.

How to Get Rid of Denial-of-Service Attacks -- Preventing DDoS attacks means filtering traffic. It's complicated by spoofing and congestion, but in this article, Iljitsch van Beijnum presents three proposals designed to help. Iljitsch is the author of BGP.

Getting Started with FreeRADIUS -- Author Jonathan Hassell shows how to install, configure, and test FreeRADIUS, an open source variation of RADIUS, in this excerpt from his book, RADIUS.

Cooking with DNS and BIND -- Here are some security-related recipes that show you how to configure a name server to conceal its version, hide its primary master, create a stealth slave, work with a firewall, and more, excerpted from DNS & BIND Cookbook.