Although the book starts with an introduction and overview of ATM, these are more refreshers - this is not a book for someone who is not already familiar with the complexities of ATM.

The book's focus is very much the UNI and PNNI layers and it concentrates on these and the interfaces to the SAAL. The detail is very much at the bits and bytes level with numerous traces of message flows scattered throughout the text.

This book would be of interest to protocol engineer debugging interfaces between ATM equipment or ATM networks at the interface level. It does not cover implementation and therefore a protocol stack programmer would need to look elsewhere.

I was disappointed to find only cursory references to the MTP3b layer or other SS7 over ATM details after the book starts with a telephony signalling (as opposed to a datacomms) bias.

A cover price of£50 makes it impossible to recommend this book.