Table of Contents

About This Manual

Document Objectives
Audience
Document Organization
Document Conventions

About This Manual

This section discusses the objectives, audience, organization, and conventions of the Internetworking Technology Overview publication.

Document Objectives

This publication provides technical information on Cisco-supported internetworking technologies. It is designed for use in conjunction with other Cisco manuals or as a standalone reference.

The Internetworking Technology Overview is not intended to provide all possible information on the included technologies. Because a primary goal of this publication is to help network administrators configure Cisco products, the publication emphasizes Cisco-supported technologies; however, inclusion of a technology in this publication does not necessarily imply Cisco support for that technology.

Audience

The Internetworking Technology Overview is written for anyone who wants to understand internetworking technologies. Cisco anticipates that many readers will use information in this publication to help configure Cisco products, but others also may find it useful.

Readers will better understand the material in this publication if they are familiar with networking terminology. The Cisco Internetworking Terms and Acronyms publication is a useful reference for those with minimal knowledge of networking terms.

Document Organization

This publication is divided into seven parts. Each part is concerned with introductory material or a major area of internetworking technology and comprises chapters describing related tasks or functions.

• Part 1, "Internetworking Basics," presents concepts basic to the understanding of internetworking and network management.
  

• Part 2, "Media-Access Technologies," describes standard protocols used for accessing network physical media.
  

• Part 3, "Packet-Switching Technologies," describes standard protocols used to implement packet-switching.
  

• Part 4, "Routed Protocols," describes several standard networking protocol stacks that can be routed through an internetwork.
  

• Part 5, "Routing Protocols," describes protocols used to route information through an internetwork.
  

• Part 6, "Bridging Technologies," describes protocols and technologies used to provide layer 2 connectivity between subnetworks.
  

• Part 7, "Network Management," describes network management protocols, architectures, and technologies.
  

Document Conventions

In this publication, the following conventions are used:

• Commands and keywords are in boldface.
  

• New, important terms are italicized when accompanied by a definition or discussion of the term.
  

• Protocol names are italicized at their first use in each chapter.