I DO APOLOGIZE FOR THE AD: However, I know there are some people that will find this of interest to them! Link Technologies, Inc, along with the Author, Dennis Burgess, is proud to offer the FIRST, Mikrotik RouterOS book on the market. Learn RouterOS, will take you though RouterOS configurations, features, options, and best practices. Screenshots, walkthroughs, and recommendations are just the start, as we include how to use Mikrotik “The Dude” Application, and v3 of the free Radius and hotspot controller, User Manager! A full year in the making, Learn RouterOS covers most of the deployment issues with RouterOS. Shows you how and what features to use, and includes lots of information from experienced Mikrotik Certified Engineers!
You can purchase on-line via the link below, or contact Link Technologies, Inc, at 314-735-0270 directly for purchasing assistance. Shipping times may be delayed due to current demand.
Wow, it’s a book. jwcn, I think there is no competing book about RouterOS out there, so I guess this is just useful information for everyone. I can’t say about the contents of this book, and the quality, but anyway - nice job, Dennis.
Dennis,
This is really great! I am interested in the book, but I would like to actually preview some of the content. The preview page for your book only gives the covers and index. I would like to know if this book is actually informative and well written, hence the request for some actual content preview. I don’t mean any offense by this, I just want to know that I’m making a good investment and I’m not buying a bunch of dead tree.
To give you an idea, the table of contents at the front runs to ten pages (with no logical sections, this makes the ToC worse than useless), the word ‘interface’ doesn’t appear in the index (this is a book on RouterOS and there’s no mention of ‘interface’ in the index?). As a result, it’s almost impossible to find a section on X (where X is the subject you’re interested in). The author overuses the word ‘typically’ and uses the abbreviation ‘etc.’ too much. Another pet hate of mine is the use of the word ‘setup’ when the phrase ‘set up’ is meant.
One paragraph from the book discussing the ‘random’ parameter in firewall filters…
"Using random can be fun. I will use the example that when me and my wife are not getting along, I use the random command to drop 30% of her web traffic and trust me, I get a response in about two minutes from enabling that rule. I don’t know what is worse, actually using that rule, or the fact that I just enable and disable when I need it!
As the random switch implies, it allows you to setup [sic] a random matching ability. Besides aggregating [sic] the wife with it, it can also do some good…"
So, there you go, the only good example the author can come up with for the random feature involves annoying his wife. Sadly this is the theme throughout the book.
Some of the content is useful, but given that the book is so badly organised, actually finding the useful bits is a task in itself. The book is in great need of proof-reading and editing and as published is very much a brain dump.
I wouldn’t recommend that anybody buy it until the book has been edited, structured and padded with more relevant examples - about half of its present content can quite safely be cut, and I’d add the same number of pages back with more examples.
I also purchased a copy, at the USA MUM and have to agree with the previous comments, the book is very poorly organised, has grammar worse than my own and nothing is covered that is not on the wiki. In fact, the majority of the illustrations are from the wiki!
I think the intention is good, but Dennis needs to employ a technical writer to help with the next edition.
I think it’s a good reference for a beginner. Of course it doesn’t cover everything, but no book does (plus this is the only RouterOS book). Sometimes our manual covers a setting only in one sentence, but here is a specialist with experience who can give additional information to that.
I disagree. There is no “This is what RouterOS does and these are the concepts behind it” chapter which is pretty fundamental in a book for beginners.
As far as I am aware, none of the criticism is due to a lack of coverage of any topic. I do, however, consider it reasonable to expect that there is an entry for ‘interface’ in the index.
As do I. He has quite clearly spent a considerable amount of time in pulling the book together. Unfortunately, just because effort was put in doesn’t make the end result any more useful.
I should add that none of the images, graphs or photographs used appear to be credited even though some of these appear to have been taken directly from MT’s site. I don’t know what agreement the author and MT had, but I find it hard to believe that MT said “Yes, sure, use our stuff free of charge and don’t credit us”.
Yes. Perhaps a mistake, but my point is that it’s a pretty fundamental mistake and is pretty indicative of how the whole book has been put together (in my opinion). I gave up wading though the ToC - ten pages of complete mish-mash and nigh on impossible to find what you’re looking for.
Well, I’m very new to RouterOs. I did also purchase this book at the MUM in Texas. I have read about three quarters of the book, and in all honestly have found it helpfull. It has been a nice reference for me, but that is my two cents.
Don’t get me wrong, I think this is a great effort on Dennis’s part, I just hope he sees this and gets the next copy proof read by a professional technical writer.
Absolutely. I have had a few e-mails which have chastised me for my comments above (Dennis, you have a fan club!!) and I would like to point out that a) I am in agreement with everybody else in this thread when I say that Dennis has put a lot of effort into the book, and b) That my comments were made because I really, really wanted the book to be good - I need a good book to recommend and I wanted it to be this one. With some help, the second edition could well be that book.
“In the meantime, are there any people here who would like to collaborate on an open document book for ROS?”
Absolutely, please count me in on a FOSS book for RouterOS. The RouterOS technical documentation is really pretty good, but few people learn well straight from the technical documentation and therefore there is certainly a niche for a book (if not a series for beginners, intermediate, and advanced) helping people get introduced to RouterOS and then taking them through more and more complex scenarios and examples.
An additional point, different people learn different ways and thus we need to provide well rounded and complete examples. This leads to the FOSS RouterOS book being iterative and continually growing in the examples and depth.
The first step to a project such as this may be coming up with a proposed list of topics to be covered / addressed and then working on that list until complete. As the primary audience of the work being described is beginners / an introduction to RouterOS the topics should support that idea and avoid advanced topics until later.
Several well written chapters might do quite a bit in advancing the publicity of RouterOS.
well, you always can go to wiki.mikrotik.com and create your own page for book contents and start writing. that way materials would be accessible to everyone willing to read.
If you are willing to start doing that, you can ask normis to create new section for you, so things start to happen and does not stop just at talk talk.
