Cisco Systems Books

If you are suffering from insomnia - your remedy is here!!! Tough to read. Many parts are just there for the heck of it (debug and other troubleshooting commands/explanations) - they simply give you the output - I can do that from my router! You need something alongside of the book if you are a novice in some of these areas. I used additional materials from Cisco website. Why 4 stars? Passed the test. I guess it is good for something.

As a seasoned student of Cisco and it's long list of educational offerings, this book brings no real suprises. When will Cisco take it's educational books seriously? This book is better than most when it comes to simple mistakes but there are still plenty of mistakes and when you see complete paragraphs duplicated on the same page you know it hasen't been proof read.

There is not the detail that Cisco books normally provide. Some sections go straight to the configuration without any real explanation of what is going on. Screen dumps lack the content to allow you to clearly see the full configuration. There is a real lack of clarity, probably the worst of the books I've read so far, and I've read a few. But, I've come to know that if you learn all that is in the book you will pass the exam. That is the only good comment I can make about this 'standard' Cisco offering.

This book has absolutely no flow to it. It is just a bunch of raw information taken directly from Cisco's site. This raw information is then all jumbled up and thrown between two hard covers.

I have read numerous Cisco Press books, up to this point I have been very pleased. I'm currently on page 187, and I honestly don't think I can bring myself to suffer through reading the remaining pages.

Talk about bad. After reading the first two books in the CCNP Prep Library and passing the respective exams, I've been struggling with this pathetic waste of paper for a month now. If you get stuck with it, plan on reading each chapter three times or more. There's no continuity between successive sentences, let alone within each chapter. I don't know if the author has absolutely no understanding of the material or not. But after being quite satisfied with the four or five other Cisco Press books I've purchased, I feel completely ripped off by this miserable (book).

Lot's of information. Some chapters are fair some are terrible. It does presents all the information needed to pass the test. However, to pass the test you will have to rely on memorizing the material. You will not be able to understand it, much less being able to do the job. In order to be able to do the job read Bill Burton's "Remote Access for Cisco Networks". Bill Burton's book is excellent, very clear and coherent. Unlike Catherine Paquet's book it flows smoothly, it is easy to follow and in the end you can perform the job.
One more tip, all remote access books I looked at miss one important piece - they do not explain the complete set of interrelationships between serial interfaces, asynchronous interfaces, lines, controllers, vtys, ttys, etc. Therefore you need to read introduction section from "Cisco IOS 12.0 Dial Solutions". It is a horrible read and you will have to fight through it. Read it five times, if you have to. But, it will give you the mental map and the foundation needed to understand any book on this topic.

Check the Cisco blueprint for R&S exam, be sure that the books you use cover all listed topics...some cover routing protocols and switching adequately but don't cover QoS and Multiservice, for example. Cisco's website is also a great study resource for the new R&S written exam.

i read this book and just faild the new ccie written exam, no matter this is a good book, also there are a lot of mistakes in it, it is worth reading it! But don't feel prepared to take the new ccie written test.

I agree with the other reviewers here that the book is well written, gives good coverage of most topics, but overall is a little light technically on some things.

The chapter on BGP was quite technical, though, and I appreciated that. I'm used to reading full-length RFC's (i.e., I've read the ones on the original TCP/IP protocol and such additional topics as DHCP, and so forth, and I can tell you from personal experience, they can be quite quite dense).

I should mention that I'm a long-time server administrator side person and am currently retired at the ripe old age of 50. When I was working, I really don't need to know that much about Cisco products, since I worked for a big Fortune 100 company and we had whole departments of people handling that side of things, just as I was responsible for the server side of things. But as I now have plenty of time on my hands, I'm currently working through all the books for the CCNA, CCNP, and CCIE that I can find in order to just get somemore background in these important areas, mainly for my own curiousity. Who knows, maybe I'll even take some of the exams. (If the stock market keeps going down, I may have to go back to work anyway!)

The Cisco books and the Sybex books have been my main resource for all of this. I agree that you need to have other sources for adequate coverage, and I found that sometimes one author's explanation of something didn't click right away, but then the next author's would.

I'm also currently working through the Sybex Switches book, and have found the Cisco Interactive Mentor CD on Switches to be useful also. The CD has interactive labs where you get practice working with the commands and troubleshooting and there is a glossary of technical terms where you can quickly look up something you've forgotten. I don't know if there's one for the CCIE Internetwork exam, but if there is, it might be worth checking out as another study aid.

Good Book if you can get past all the errors. I even found notes left, to author himself. I have never seen so many errors. I began to doubt most of the text.
Why can't someone just audit the book before publishing and catch all these errors?

Terrible.

I usually feel that a Todd Lammle book is a book to take seriously. While studying for the CCIE Routing & Switching (R&S), I purchased this book anticipating a book worthy of the Lammle title. While I was not too disappointed, I did not feel the book offered any information that I could not find elsewhere. Also, while the book gave a good intro for most subjects (ISDN, Frame-Relay, NAT), I do not feel one would be able to walk away from the CCIE as feeling like you passed solely on this book. I would not place this book within the top 15 books to use for the CCIE. For example - on page 327, how can one show a table of possible protocols found in the protocol field of an IP Header WITHOUT including TCP (protocol 6) and UDP (protocol 17). On the flip side, I did feel that the books discussion was a good intro to BGP - a topic which usually takes books to explain.

I give this book 3 pings out of 5:
!!..!

I studied from this book and thanks God I passed the exam. However, I had to get many other sources to practice on exam questions. I think the book is very good, but it lacks the exam-feel multiple questions. It also has a lot of writing which can be shortened out.

This exam will retire on July 31, 2000. People planning to take the exam after that date should buy the newest edition of this book.

One person whom I know who has taken the exam says the real exam is significantly more difficult than the questions that are on the CD.

I studied from this book and thanks God I passed the exam. However, I had to get many other sources to practice on exam questions. I think the book is very good, but it lacks the exam-feel multiple questions. It also has a lot of writing which can be shortened out.

This is a fairly good book for the folks on the CCNP/CCIE track, its probably overkill for folks just looking to get their CCNA (The Todd Lammle book is probably better suited for that). It covers a broad range of material in fairly good depth. There are a few technical errors in the book, but overall if you can absorb 70 % of the information in this book and have a good understanding of the practice scenarios you will have no problem passing the CCNA. I found the sample exam on CD to be much harder then the actual CCNA 640-507 exam, also there were a few errors in the test exam. Overall a good pick for those on the CCNP/CCIE track. I picked up this book 5 days before I was scheduled to take the CCNA and passed with a 924.

There's useful study material here somewhere -- but just try to puzzle it out.

This book BADLY needs to go back to a real editor. Not just to clean up the errors (there are a truckload of 'em), but to give it some sort of organization that makes sense. And while they're at it -- to try explaining commands and concepts before using them in examples and scenarios.

For the sort of money charged for these books, one expects something that's been at least read by somebody other than the author before being printed.

Unless you enjoy wading through things like repeated "study objective number" tables, I'd avoid this one.

As with all the Exam Cram books...this one is full of information that is not covered in the Sybex study guide (ex. passive interfaces).

The book does have typos in it, but they are very obvious to anyone who is serious about getting their CCNP.

I would recommend this book as a study aide.

If you want a 10,000 foot view of the exam this book is OK. If you aren't already familiar with routing protocols like BGP, OSPF, and EIGRP you'll need a more detailed reference... like a Cisco Press Exam Guide or CCO on line.

I studied only using this book and minimal previous experience and passed with 739. The book has minimal errors. There were tons of questions/issues on the test that were not covered in the book. If you "have the nack" and are just wanting to pass the test, this might aid you, but it seems there's quite a lot it does not teach you. Even though I passed, I feel there is still so much I do not understand. 'Gotta find another book on routing to make sure I know what I'm doing.

The CD with this book has several errors and trying to registar it on line and get "free" updates just does not work. One would do much better to purchase BOSON practice tests from Geocerts.com. They are the way to go along with the Cisco Press book.

Mannnn, this book is an excellent resource. Upon sitting for the test and being presented a few questions, I felt that I prepared well. I used this book and the Cisco site during my studies and scored very well. Buy this book, follow up on anything that you do not fully understand (Cisco site) and you will do fine.

The topics presented on the test were all covered in the book! Further, for an Exam Cram, the topics were covered in sufficient detail. Coverage of the XL access switches proved to be sufficient, as well. The test interrogated me on several topics related to those switches, more so than I expected. However, knowledge gained from this book pulled me through.

Note: I noticed a few errors in the book related to the all router and all hosts multicast addresses. Beware of that! All router = 224.0.0.2, All hosts = 224.0.0.1. However, a few errors are to be expected with any book. Hence, I bestow five stars upon this book, anyway.

Richard Deal for President!!! This book is off da chain! Thx.

Once again Cisco has produced a very poor quality book. I have now purchased all the CCNP books produced by Cisco and this book is no different to the rest of them. Poor quality, No proof reading, mistakes everywhere, repeated paragraphs/tables and in this book in particular a real lack of detail. This book can be likened to the old Sunday night homework, very little planning, very little content and insufficient detail, by far the worst book in the course. I know from the other books in the CCNP range that the book will cover all subjects in the exam, but is that really good enough ? I for one don't think so.

Luckily Cisco networking products are not of the same quality as there books otherwise there would be no Cisco!

I bought this book to study for the CIT exam (which I passed), but I found it a great reference to have on the shelf by my desk. It is chock full of the output of router and switch "show" commands and fully explains each screen.

It also has one of the best explainations of route caching I have read.

Well worth the money.

Book came in extremely well condition. It was packed very carefully for shipping and arrived next day. I would definetley buy future books and also recomend others.

I'm finally a CCNP and this test was the last exam I had to take. I would also venture to say this might very well be the most confusing exam I've taken.

On to the book, the book pretty much covered everything that's on the CCNP exam. I normally buy two books when I study for a CCNP exam but I didn't need another one for this. The only gripes I have about this book is that it was laid out in a way where it gets boring after you go through several pages of "screenshots".

Most of the book is about using show commands, and debug commands. It does very well in presenting a problem and showing you what tools you should use under what circumstance and what to look for in a debug/log. The Novell and Appletalk portion of this is an integral part of the exam and the book does have a comprehensive coverage on them. The ISDN and Frame-relay troubleshooting portion of this book is really informative and I use most of the stuff listed about it on my day-to-day job as a network engineer.

This is one of my least favorite Cisco books that I have in my possession because of its readability but, nonetheless, I would have a harder time knowing the exam as much if it wasn't for the book.

Wanna pass the exam? get it.

They took Cisco's CIT course and formatted it in book format, in some cases not even bothering to put sections together in a logical fashion. Chapter 2, for example, is a mess. They took the PowerPoint slides that cover protocol behavior and put them at the beginning and then tacked on the appendix from the course, which is essentially Cisco's Internetworking Technologies Overview. The result is that topics are covered twice in different styles.
The descriptions of the figures are wrong. Take Figure 2.3, for example. The description says that it shows ARPs in addition to the 3-way handshake. It doesn't, at least not in the edition I'm reading (1st edition)
One other comment: this is an awfully boring way to study for the exam. The book is really dry with very little added to the course notes and PowerPoint slides from the CIT class. It's also only an exam study guide. It's not like other books which add some material for actual network administrators, not just exam takers.
One final comment: the tests at the end of the chapters are too basic and don't resemble the questions on the actual Support test in any way.

Some reviewers call this text a "puff piece." I don't see that. It is possible that Bunnell was friendly with Cisco management when he wrote the book -- why not? He has access to better information that way.

But whether the book is biased is less important than what it covers. Cisco Systems is a company started in what amounts to a living room, by tech people who could foresee a market for equipment that could make computers talk to each other -- computers which at the time were in nearby buildings, never mind around the world!

Every entrepreneur can benefit from a history that tells us how Leonard Bosack and Sandra Lerner can go from the leaders of a start-up that had more sales than it could manufacture for, to unemployed with stock options worth millions. It's too bad the book didn't follow them after they left Cisco, as their story (especially Lerner's) may be worth another book.

Not every small company can grow to Cisco's size, but any small company that survives must face a maturing process that promises to completely change the way it does business. This book serves as a signpost for all entrepreneurs, telling us what's just ahead.

After seeing CISCO profiled on one of Robert Cringley's Nerds 2.0.1 documentary, I was fascinated about how one of the giants of communications was created within a dining room.

I bought this book expecting to hear about the excitement and struggles of an organization as it is becoming very big, very fast. This book seemed to vaguely cover this period within Cisco's history. There is very little written about the struggle and difficulties within the management that must have existed at that time.

I would not recommend this book.

This book does a severe disservice to the Cisco story, and to the business book genre in general. The author's lack of insight, much less comprehension of the industry and technology is laughable. Worse yet, his lack of passion for the subject exposes the fact that book was basically a con on his readers.

Some representative excerpts:
1) "All and sundry goods could be purchased at McWhorters Express Store in building J. Money was available from the conveniently located ATM."

*Talk about telling a compelling story. Alas it has come to this.

2) "The Cisco-Powered Networks campaign was Cisco's first foray into the spehere of the home networking market."

*Wow. Time to get a better author, or at least an editor. Hilarious.

3) "Nouns and verbs in Cisco-speak include AccessPath, ClickStart, ..., and FastHub."

*What more can one say? Reading this book is laborious, and yet you will learn virtually nothing.

Given Cisco's incredible rise from tiny startup to global giant, somebody will eventually write a book that does justice to the story. But not yet, and when they do, I doubt if a "conveniently located ATM" will figure prominently.

There has not been a review on this bk for a while, so I thought I will do one. With Dot Com crashes, and Cisco laid off 7000+ workers in 2001, John Chambers' ideal of no large company wide lay offs provide an interesting contrast to much of the PR in this bk.

I have just finished reading Hard Drive, by Wallace; and Jack Straight from the Gut, by Jack Welch. Compare to these two books, Making the CISCO Connection was a bit thin on details. I do not know if its editorial lapses or the authors understanding of the material, Bunnell keeps making wild claims like " the future is going to be 100% pure IP.." with no supporting evidence. He also spent quite a few passages comparing ATM and IP as if they are competing technology trying to grap market share. ATM is just another way of hooking up networks like Frame Relay, ISDN... etc. and IP is a protocol that happily runs on any network technolgy that support it.

Jeff Bezos made a late appearance towards the end of the book, funny the author never mentioned who he was. There were quite a few of this name dropping with no adequate introductions. You'll get used to it and ignore it.

Still, a good story on the rise of Cisco, but don't look for a "behing-the-scene" management guidebook. For interesting decision making process of some of these industry players, go for Hard Drive.

Truly a puff piece. The authors don't acknowledge any of the major challenges facing Cisco or give any sort of balanced review of the company. Cisco and technological innovation are about as far apart as they are at Microsoft. It's just a marketing machine, pure and simple.

Very satisfied with service and book. Product was in good condition as advertised. Arrived within a week of order. Overall very happy with the purchase, would buy again from this seller.

Not really what I had hoped for. The are quite a few errors in this book. Alot of the the examples in the case studies are incorrect. One example is the configuration of the frame-relay sub-interfaces. The case study shows the incorrect command to enter sub-interface configuration mode. This should be an obvious error for the editor (if they were technical enough to understand the information). There are many other errors and mistakes throughout the book. Too many examples that you have to turn a page or two from where the text is to see what they are talking about. - Very confusing! Not the best book on Cisco I have ever used.

The authors did a fairly good job in making the dry content matter of BCRAN quite readable and easy to absorb. Out of the whole CCNP curriculum, this was by far the dullest of subjects, but at the hands of Thomas & Quiggle, it was handled nicely. All chapters were clearly written, though the practice questions at the ends of the chapters could have been tougher. The big problem, though, is the fact that this book is full of errors. Thankfully, they're mostly of the editorial kind, glaring at the reader from the page. They actually helped me to see whether I was following the text properly in my mind. If something was out of order, it immediately jumped at me. Obviously not everyone finds such errors "helpful," and it's a shame that a decent book like this was probably rushed to the print and barely edited.

I use this book as a main reference book for Remote Access network setup/maintenance in my daily work. And this was the only book I read throughly during preparing my BCRAN test ( I took test the first time last week and passed with a score of 853). I did NOT read Graig Dennis' Cream book but I did all practice questions. I spent one day read briefly on Catherine Paquet's BCRAN book and did all questions on each chapter(Very good questions). I believe ANY single one of those books contains ALL the information you will need to pass the test. The question is how much you can understand the technology only based on the reading. I have to say, I work on the remote access on the daily basis, but still there were a couple of questions on the test I was clueless (the solutions are on Catherine's book but I doubt if I would pay attention on them even I read). So the best bet is get your hands on. At least do all the Case Study on each chapter of this book. Good Luck!

This book has good coverage of ISDN, Frame Relay, and PPP. I find the material here is well presented, especially the step by step instructions on how to configure ISDN PRIs. The test questions are sometimes very difficult, too difficult for the BCRAN. They do make you think about the topic so that you can really understand what is going on. For those who have left negative comments, I can only guess they don't "get it" and would have difficulties with any of the books describing this topics. I also liked Cisco's BCRAN book by Catherine Paquet and Todd Lammale's book. Unlike the other BCRAN books this book describes other topics that are relevant to the topic, but not the exam, like configuring IPX over PPP. Good information, keep it up!

after using this book in the netacademy, it was helpful but I don't look back at it with a good memory. I remember it's faults - the glossary that left terms out. Cisco should have editted the text and cirrculum better before sending it. There are graphics that don't make a point - they sometimes don't put together the same information the text gives. First Yr Guide 2nd edition, pg 180 for instance, fig. 5-19 says to use a straight through cable when both ports are designated with 'x' but the correct caption should say "crossover cable". This is just after the text defining the pinout of the 2 RJ-45 connectors in a crossover cable are different from each other. Lots of other errors and shortfalls make this frustrating and disappointing.
By comparison Wendell Odom is a better writer and his Cisco books are a joy. Maybe the 2004 netacad books are better too.

The First-Year Companion Guide, 2nd Edition was designed as a supplement for the online curriculum version 2.1.4 supplied by Cisco - which is currently being taught in Cisco Networking Academies worldwide. However, you do not have to be a student of the Academy to grasp the concepts this book entails.

The Companion Guide itself is divided into 30 chapters. The first 15 chapters were designed to get you familiar with computer basics, the OSI model, and how data flows on a network. The beginning of each chapter contains an introduction and a list of objectives you will be able to perform after completion of the chapter. Many people do not pay enough attention to these objectives. They read through the chapter, answer the multiple guess questions at the end and move on. If you cannot answer the objectives of the chapter, you will never grasp the concept. Remember if it is in the book, Cisco wants you to know it for a reason. Each chapter ends with a summary of the chapter and a "Check your Understanding" section which poses questions concerning the reviewed material.

The second part of First-Year Companion Guide, 2nd Edition is where you learn the workings of a router and process of routing in a WAN environment. Here you will learn about router configuration, routing protocols, and introduction to network security and residential networking. As with the first part of this book, each chapter contains objectives, summaries, and questions on reviewed material.

This guide is not without it errors. The Cisco Press website contains a 6 page errata for this book. Many of the corrections deal with wrong answers to the "Check you Understanding" section, and diagrams located throughout the book. Also, many of the books come with incomplete CD-ROMs (i.e. missing lab files, videos, etc.) However, Cisco Press did a great job of posting these corrections and making them easy to download for your convenience along with replacing the CD at no cost.

The best thing I like about this book is that is clear and thorough. The authors did a wonderful job of including "More Information" sections to direct readings to RFCs, websites, and other material to help with the learning process. In the end, if you want to get a firm understanding of the basics of networking and routing, this book is for you.

I am a student in Cisco's online academy program. Though this book was not required for my course, I found the online material too hard on the eyes. The book contains nearly identical material to the online course. The main benefit is the review questions at the end of each chapter, which are more extensive and consistent with the chapter testing material than the online quizzes. The book is worth purchasing for these reasons. As for the CD, I am much less satisfied with it. My primary complaint is that it is NOT compatible with Apple computers (so I can't use it at home). Because my course is not as lab intensive as it should be, the CD is vital. I use it at school on a Windows machine, but because I do not have administrative access, cannot view the Movies program. If you have an Apple computer, you may want to purchase some additional software programs that will work on your computer. I hope that Cisco will rectify this issue in upcoming editions.

This book is intended to be used as a text for the Cisco Networking Academy classes. Along with the classroom hands on training and the information you obtain from the text, this is all you need to achieve the CCNA. As a stand alone study resource, I would recommend investing in some kind of router or network configuration simulator.

Overall, a good study resource. I don't know what everyone is talking about with the movies and test questions on the disk not working... Mine seem to work just fine.

I myself am a novice-networking student. Having known little about the details of networking, this book has been instrumental in my high test scores. It is clear and concise, although there are some errors in this book; I highly recommend it for each networking student.

A basic lab setting will help you to break the ice.If you are serious about CCNA there are better ones in the market place.
Only around 10 guided labs. For those who not have hands-on router/switch experience, the Virtual Lab will give some insight into configurations assuming that you have done your regular textbook reading.
You are going to need much more if you wish pass the CCNA exam.

The Sybex Gold lab edition takes most router commands at any piont in the labs, and just like real routers they accept short abriviations of commands, unlike Cisco's v-labs that require the exact command in full syntax for each short activity. The writen lab activities cover about 1/4 of the most important information from the first four semesters of the Cisco Netwoking academy,
's lab program, it very convientaly puts togeather important second semester information with fourth semester information and it does a good job. This lab is not built the same way as the official Cisco lab set up, and you can't change the change the serial lines...

A Router Simulator needs to have more than 6 devices if you want to really practice anything. This is a good basic simulator for the INTRO material but does not do much of anything to prepare you for the ICND or CCNP material.

I try to be open minded about products, but I think the only reason this product has been popular uis because there was no competition out there. Now that cisco press has released their new CCNA book with NetSim in it, I can't see any value to this far inferior product.

No question, this lab sim is good and provides a nice topology to work with.

BUT, for the coin you have to spend, you may find a better way to go. Check out IPExpert.com. They provide a free CCNA workbook with about 20 labs in it. Then check out www.gettLabs.com. They provide a FREE rack to work through the IPExpert labs. For no money, you can work with REAL equipment. Read the gettLabs Support forums before you start. There is a lot of helpful infomation for CCNA people using their equipment.

I liked Sybex, but it is just too hard to justify the cost.

Whilst the author has gone to great lengths to show various routing theories & their implementation, the number of errors is large. On just about every page there are simple spelling mistakes and missing information for the router configs.
If you have the patience to work through the mistakes, it is a worthy reference.

if you know what your doing and have the experince to self teach yourself aided by an expert this book will help you nail the routing of IP on Cisco routers plu show you an example ccie lab, what else could you want a book loaded with examples and great ideas, its a good book.

This book has alot of good exercises which illustrate useful and valuable concepts and their implementation.

However, there are many, many inconsistancies between the config files, the output from show commands, and the figures. A typical example is Figure 5-5 on page 236. R4 in the figure has two serial connections but the interface addresses are not shown on the figure. In the config file for R4 on page 244, only one serial interface has been configured. In some labs, the output from sample show commands includes intefaces or networks not configured in the figures or config files.

I don't think I have worked through any lab in this book involving more than two routers which does not have this type of error. I think that the author has done a good job choosing which concepts to illustrate and then coming up with some labs to illustrate them. Too bad that no one got the labs actually fully configured and working before taking the screen captures. The result is that many labs take about twice as long to complete as they should since you must figure out what are the mistakes and missing information to complete them.

Hi

This book contains many mistakes but does fill a gap for those wanting to prepare for the CCNP with hands-on experience.

I actually learned a lot from the mistakes in this book. But when you're studying on your own and trying to build your confidence on routing it is really disconcerting to not be able to reach the same results as the book. It's only with lots more reading (a good thing!) that you discover the screen output in the book isn't accurate!

I think with the Errata in hand (or preferably a reprinted edition) this is still a book worth having but 4/5 star reviewers must not have followed the exercises on real equipment!

Jc

I purchased this book hopeful to put my recently acquired $12,000 CCIE-level lab to work wrapping up my CCNP before moving on to my CCIE.

Boy, was I disappointed. This book is riddled with errors and omissions. You will spend more time trying to read between the lines and troubleshoot than you will actually learning the material.

Case in point: the advanced OSPF scenario sets you up with 8 different routers. After cabling them in, I started configuring them -- only to find that the instructions conflicted with each other (are the loopbacks supposed to be advertised as /32, or /24?), or were missing alltogether, forcing me go to the end of the lesson to pull the WAN IP addresses for each router from the resulting configs themselves!

There is a reason this book isn't sold on cisco.com anymore. B