Cisco Systems Books

A very good reference guide for any new/existing cme/cue deployment. Specifically the sample config guides were very useful. Overall this book is well written.

Cisco IP Communications Express: CallManager Express with Cisco Unity Express (ISBN 1-58705-180-X) is an all-in-one resource for configuring, managing, and troubleshooting the Cisco CallManager Express (CME) solution. It is almost 900 pages and is well organized into five parts: overview, feature operation and applications, administration and management, maintenance and troubleshooting, and appendices. If you are involved in configuring or maintaining the Cisco CallManger Express, this book will provide you with all the information you need to get your work done.

Cisco CME is an integrated solution offered by Cisco for meeting the IP telephony needs of small businesses or branch offices. The CME solution, which consists of the call processing feature and the voice mail feature, runs on the Cisco routers ranging from the 1700 series to the 3700 series and beyond. Whereas the CallManager suite offers centralized approach to building out an enterprise wide VoIP network, the CME is meant to serve the needs of smaller businesses or to integrate seamlessly into the larger, enterprise solution.

The book is well written and starts out with a high level architecture of the deployment scenarios for CME. The second part gets into the features and applications side of the solution. This part is where the crux of the book lies. It presents a detailed coverage of the commands used to configure the CallManager solution under various scenarios such as implementing different call features, integrating VoIP with PSTN, and deploying CME as part of a larger CallManager solution. This part presents a thorough coverage of Unity Express (UE), the voicemail module of the CME. The third part relates to the management of CME. Particularly useful in this part is a real-life configuration example as it illustrates and brings together a lot of the material covered in the earlier part of the book. Part four gets into the essential topic of troubleshooting the CME solution. It provides useful tips and solutions for common problems found in deploying the call processing and voice mail aspects of CME. This is definitely a very useful section of the book. The last part, the appendices, has reference materials and scripts used in the book to make daily tasks easier etc.

One of the strong points of the book is a multitude of sample configurations. The authors provide sample configurations throughout the book to help illustrate the concepts being presented. This sample configuration goes a long way if the reader has the task of actually configuring CME. The other strong point of the book is the depth of coverage given to each topic that is discussed. With the exception of a handful of topics (one in particular which I'll mention), the book never glosses over any topic; rather it covers it in detail, ensuring that most aspects of the topic are addressed. The exception to this was the coverage of the D/A module(s) used for attaching analog devices to CME, such as a fax machine. Given that analog fax machines still constitute a critical part of any business, I would expect this topic to be covered in detail. However, I found that no configuration examples were provided on how to configure this in the CME suite.

In summary, this book is a great all-in-one reference for configuring and managing CME. I would highly recommend it to any professional tasked with working on Cisco's CallManager Express.

overall this book is very good. I like the examples it presents to make thing clear, and also the broadness of topics it covers.
Since Cisco IP Telephony evolves so quickly, I wish Cisco will release newer editions with updated technologies. in particular I was hoping this book should contribute some to SIP and its deployment in UCME environment.

I've used this book as a main reference for my first complete implementation of CCME and CUE. I said "main" reference instead of "only" reference, because there are few small gaps to be filled by Cisco on-line documentation, but the deficiencies are too small to justify anything less than 5 stars. Additionally, there is a lot of general (IP and traditional) telephony information so even a relative beginner, after reading this book, will be able to intelligently interview future users (Chapter 5 is simply brilliant!), design quite complex system with many fancy call features, and even create scripts for quite sophisticated Auto-Attendant options. Certain concepts are not explained in complete detail (for example dial peers or voice ports), but deeply enough for the needs of CCME.

A must have book


This book is a great tool for full and complete understanding of Cisco's IP Communication Express. The structure is geared to first provide a foundation with an overview, then moves into design and implementation the book is organized into different parts that provide great coverage of all aspects.

Part I starts with introducing IP Communication. The coverage begins by taking you on a journey into what Cisco IPC is, the benefits of IPC, and the architecture of IPC networks. The one thing you notice is that the authors took great care in organizing the chapters. Each chapter is well written and easy to follow along. This makes the book a great choice as either a first learning book or as a refresher book for experienced professionals looking to augment their knowledge. One of the first chapters shows you the features and functions of the various gateways, WAN interfaces and IP phones available for use in an IPC network. This allows you to pick the best equipment for your particular solution. I believe this is great because it allows you learn some features of the product in order to decide if you would like to research it further; this helps streamline the process of design and political issues. Another section of the Part 1 goes over the architecture of IPC. You will learn the ins and outs of what happens at a low level. You will learn a-lot of core information; get an introduction to equipment and technologies that can be utilized.


Part II of this book is where the fun begins. Chapter 4 goes over the IP phones in more detail. You are taught about features and how to configure the individual phones. The chapter is short and to the point. Chapter 5 is an incredible book where the engineers' ears will perk up. Call Manager Call processing features are presented in this chapter. The topics here include hunt groups, call parking, shared lines, intercom, paging and much more. I really like the configurations and examples in this book. With this chapter you will be able to quickly implement the CM features.
The next chapter deals with Connectivity to the PSTN. The focuses in this chapter are signaling and how to handle the inputted digits. One of the only faults I think with this book is that chapters 5 and 6 should be swapped.

Part III and IV cover Administration, Management, Maintenance and Troubleshooting
Now is really where the techies cheer up. Here is all the goodies on how to setup CME, UE, and what to do if problems arise. The gold mine is located in these 2 parts.
These chapters provide the reader with detail and examples to help reinforce all that is being explained.

I don't want to spoil this book or be long winded so I will say the remaining pages of this book are well worth the read. It covers everything you need in order to obtain a solid understanding of Cisco's IPC. There is no area that isn't covered with attention to detail. The authors provide quality information that is very useful in all areas of understanding and implementation of Cisco IP Express. The reader will come away with exceptional and relevant knowledge to do anything needed with IPC. I got this book to help augment my 4+ years with Cisco Voice products, I feel that it did help cement my knowledge and also taught me quite a few new things.


Brion S. Washington

I bought this book used hoping it would be a good addition to my reference libary. It did not cover the topics I was expecting. The first half of the text covered basic LAN technology, WAN technology and protocols. The remaning chapters went over a basic configuration of a cisco router right out of the box. Going only slighty more in depth than what can be done with the set-up help dialogue when you first power up.
I am not at all saying this is not a good book, but it is aimed at someone with very little to no basic networking knowledge, and who has never seen a cisco router before. If you fit that description this will make a good read for you.

I have just read the first four chapters, but I have already formed an opinion: This book will become a best seller. The author explains the stuff in the way I want it. Thank you for wiriting this book.

This was an outstanding book with the little knowledge I had already on Cisco routers. This books brought me up to speed in a hurt in a fun easy to read type book. I loved it. And I look forward to reading more of the Practical Series of books from QUE.

I do agree that this is the best introduction book for Cisco beginners. It gives you from all the basic things you need to know about networking concepts and then explain the features of the routers and how to configure it.

I would recommend this books to my friends. Well the price itself is affordable :)

Simple yet thorough.

On my desk I had:

IP Routing Primer - doesn't make good bed-time reading ;-)

Cisco Routers Black Book - very nicely written, but a bit too detailed for a quick job.

Those were given by my employer.

Practical Cisco Routers - thin and easy to read. Uses extensive examples to show you exactly how things work.

That one is a personal copy.

I only had to refer to my Practical book in order to setup the router and tell someone to set up the other end of the system.

This book will not tell you the intricacies of EIGRP or explain what the output of sh tech means, but you will be up and running in no time. I only had to read one chapter to get everything configured and integrated into my main global network.

Do yourself a favor and read it thoroughly before starting a configuration using a GUI tool. There is a lot more you need to know than you might believe otherwise.

So just how much do I like this book? I am not willing to sell it!

used this book with the CWSP book and passed the CWSP with flying colors. This book is very detailed and must be read slow to retain and more important implement the solutions.

OK, the title does indeed tell a great deal about this particular book: However, the "Cisco" tag may be misleading. Cisco WLAN Equipment and even some terminology is used throughout this text. With a Vendor's badge on the cover and name in the title it prepared me for an extremely biased volume of configurations and presentations on Cisco specific technology. This text greatly exceeded a book with that good but narrower approach. A great plus of this particular text is the detail it provides on technology and design criteria which is applicable to WLAN security regardless of technology vendor. It has taken the place of my best vendor agnostic text as the first reference I grab.

Kirshna, Sri, Andrew, and Darrin have delivered the subtitle "Expert guidance for securing your 802.11 networks" in 13 chapters. Vast majority of their 395 pages of text and diagrams are not only applicable but extremely valuable to anyone charged with designing, implementing, and administrating WLANs in today's security conscious environment.

Guidance on secure WLAN design is far more than delivery of some cookie cutter equipment configs. The authors obviously recognized this and exceeded this reader's expectation. Their guidance was achieved by delivering sufficient detail on all the technologies and interdependencies that are required to deliver WLAN Security. They did not pave a single configuration which would have had too narrow an audience. They provided the foundation which enables, even seasoned WLAN engineers, to deliver for a wide variety of business requirements.

My copy has loads of dog-eared pages. Those pages mark specific paragraphs which have been very valuable in customer and support organization presentations.

If you're interested in designing secure WLAN which fits your customer's needs and performs well.
Then, you should pick up a copy of this text.

I'm looking for an update from these guys which includes some of the additional features and functions available in the latest "Cisco" WLAN technologies from both Aironet and Airespace teams.

Great book for a WLAN designer, implementor, operator, or manager of any of those resources.

The title is definitely in alignment with the content. A basic-to-intermediate discussion of security, as it applies to wireless LANs, is presented in this book. When I completed the book, I certainly had a much better understanding of wireless LAN security fundamentals - both generically and with a Cisco slant. The book has contributions from 4 persons, which may explain the healthy perspective given to the subject of wireless LAN security.

I know the number of chapters of a book can't always tell much of the story, but in the case of the 13 chapters contained in this book - spread out over almost 400 pages - I immediately felt that no single chapter would contain an amount of information that may be overwhelming as far as being able to retain my focus. The 2 final chapters comprised the greatest number of pages for any single chapter, and rightfully so. It would have been a compromise of the completion of the overall material to have limited the number of pages involving configuration examples and deployment scenarios.

I really appreciated chapter 2. This chapter was titled "Basic Security Mechanics and Mechanisms", and the content was just as the title suggested. The subject matter discussed security without any connection to wireless LANs. With "Security" being a complete topic all by itself, it was beneficial to have a little introduction to some generic security fundamentals before blending this topic with wireless networking. If the subject of computer/network security is not your forte, then you'll be served well with this brief exposure.

Chapters 3 and 4 were a welcomed addition because they provided a "warm-up" to wireless networking. The authors, in my opinion, did a very good job in not assuming that the reader would be a seasoned veteran of wireless networking. With chapters 2, 3 and 4 leading the way, the groundwork was set for a solid comprehension for the remainder of the book.

So, it is in chapter 5 -- "WLAN Basic Authentication and Privacy Methods" -- where the discussion of security for wireless LANs really begins. Once again, the title of the chapter is in sync with the content. What's provided is some light exposure to security methods. The information in the previous chapters really help to digest this chapter's material. This chapter is one of the "key" chapters in the book's presentation of wireless LAN security; the foundation to the discussion of wireless LAN security begins here.

The remaining chapters up to chapter 11 contained more in-depth discussion of security in the wireless LAN. I was pleased to see a discussion on the Wireless Domain Services (WDS), Wireless LAN Solution Engine, and Cisco Structured Wireless Aware Network (SWAN). While there's plenty of information at Cisco's website regarding these mechanisms, including the information in the context of the book content enhanced my understanding.

I don't believe this is a book that is intended to prepare for any Cisco-related certification; not that that was suggested anywhere to begin with. However, the reason for my comment is because there are none of the traditional questions at the end of each chapter to test chapter comprehension. So, if you want to test your understanding or memory, you'll have to create your own questions as your read through each chapter.

There will be a number of terms that may be unfamiliar to some readers, so I'll encourage you to note those as you read each chapter. The book contains no glossary for you to reference terms -- all nice and neat, in alphabetical order.

The book is for someone with at least a Cisco Certified Network Administrator (CCCNA)-level of knowledge. Certainly if the reader has a fair understanding of wireless networking, the focus can be exclusively placed on wireless LAN security. I would not recommend this book as a first-read to someone who doesn't have an understanding of wireless networking -- unless they're going to read only chapters 3 and 4. Again, chapters 3 and 4 are very good for a first exposure to wireless LAN theory.

Using a rating scale of 1 to 5 (with 1 being the worst, and 5 being the best) I'd give the book a rating of 5. Even with the fast evolution of wireless networking technology, and wireless standards being in almost a constant state of flux, I can see how I'd still be able to refer to this book for many months to come.

The title explicitly says Cisco, and indeed there is a lot of material enclosed that is specific to how Cisco implements its wireless routers. But you could plausibly also use this book as a good guideline to general purpose wireless security.

The authors have gone to some length to explain the general principles of 802.11*. In and of itself, this will be useful to some readers, for 802.11 is now a huge set of complex standards. With the official documentation being quite turgid prose, though necessary of course. For clarity, this book is a good and far more understandable alternative.

The text also goes into associated topics, like the encryption protocols associated with 802.11. Plus, and this is important, it describes third party, often open source, tools that can be used to sniff for insecure networks. Tools like Kismet or Wellenreiter, where the latter is meant for wardriving. One of the first things you should do is download and use one of these tools [or even several of them] against your wireless net, if it is already running. Better that you discover any weaknesses in it, than others do so.

The four authors of Cisco Wireless LAN Security do an excellent job of striking a balance between writing concise enough that the book is not overwhelming, but detailed enough for the reader to truly understand the subject matter. Not an easy task.

The book is titled Cisco Wireless LAN Security, which might actually make some people shy away from it, but the Cisco part is a bit of a misnomer. Some of the information and examples are Cisco-centric, but the majority of the information in the book is vendor-neutral and should be understood and applied on just about any wireless network.

The beginning chapters provide an excellent framework for those new to wireless LAN technology, but it quickly moves beyond that to much deeper and more complex subjects within wireless LAN security.

The discussion of wireless vulnerabilities and on wireless security techniques helps you gain an understanding that you can take away from the book and apply to your unique situation. The configuration samples and examples throughout the book are excellent.

I don't recommend that someone new to wireless networks pick this up, but anyone tasked with protecting or securing a wireless LAN should definitely use this book as a resource.

This book is an important addition to the body of knowledge of high availability in general and network availability in particular. Do not let the title mislead you, this book is not about high availability for Cisco - it uses that product family for examples. The information provided in this excellent book can be effectively applied to any vendor-specific or multi-vendor network architecture.

I am not going to rehash the table of contents or the lengthly editorial review - I am going to jump into why I like this book and what I think makes it so valuable.

First, no 24x7 system is a true highly available information resource unless you can access it. Try as I may, I cannot think of a single company that does not employ a network as the base infrastructure for their information systems. This book provides information necessary to create a foundation for high-availability and 24x7 operations.

Second, the book is a catalog of high availability designs that will fit within any network architecture, regardless of complexity, products used or geographical scope. No matter what your network currently looks like you will find out what it takes to transform it into a reliable, resilient 24x7 network. The author has provided a design strategy for every conceivable situation and network configuration, and thoroughly discusses the underlying technical issues. This is where the "Cisco" part of the title comes in - he uses that particular product family as examples for achieving high availability designs for each scenario.

Third, the disaster recovery section in the book is well thought out and shows that the author has a lot of knowledge and experience in business continuity planning and disaster recovery. This section alone is worth the price of the book.

This book is, in my opinion, essential reading for network architects, consultants and integrators, and operations managers who are seeking a total solution to high-availability solutions.

What I would love to see is a follow-on book that provides the design information reformatted as design patterns. This would be an invaluable resource for experienced network architects and consultants.

(An update -- I just noticed that this book is now out of print. However, it's still, as of June 2003, by far the best source of sample configurations and detailed explanations for WAN design with Cisco routers. You could spend days digging around for sample configs and cisco.com and still wouldn't have the breadth of examples found in this book.)

This book is a must-have reference for wide area networking engineers. The book provides both background and practical configuration advice for a wide range of WAN scenarios. What makes this book uniquely helpful is the way that the author steps through each of the available Cisco techniques for providing redundancy. The author first explains how the technology works, and then proceeds to show full example configurations, and then explains real world caveats of the configuration. Reading this book gave me a clear understanding of the different types of fail-over and redundancy available in Cisco products, and in which circumstances each would be most applicable.

I would recommend that anyone designing a WAN read this book cover to cover and then keep it as a reference for future design work. I've read it multiple times already and with each new project I find another section that applies directly to my work.

This book gives a well-written introduction to how to optimize the availability of networks, restricted of course to Cisco equipment. The author both argues from a theoretical standpoint, but also gives example implementations in order to connect with the real world. Those readers interested purely in the modeling of high availability networks will probably never have to actually engage in the administration of network devices, but the author encourages the perusal of the example implementations in order to gain insight into the workings of high-availability networks. I did not read chapters 4, 5, 10, 11 and 12 so I will omit their review.

The first chapter defines the concept of network availability and introduces some of the elementary mathematical tools needed to characterize it. The author stresses the need for performing a 'availability management analysis' to measure the current availability of a network and study the causes of past failures. He also points out the "catch-22s" in the naive application of availability analysis, such as the need for insuring no common failure modes when employing parallel redundancy.

Chapter two discusses bridging and routing, with careful attention given to the designations of "switch" and "hub", and to the choice of network topology. The routing protocols RIPv2, OSPF, EIGRP, integrated IS-IS, and BGP are discussed in terms of their stability, performance and availability. Explicit calculations for the metric in EIGRP are given, to illustrate the difference between it and OSPF when redundancy is present.

In chapter 3, the author considers various approaches that allow the network engineer to extend the multiply-connected design of the HA network to the network end systems. This will have the effect of eliminating all single points of failure associated with network access. He first considers the incorporation of a second network interface with independent addresses and the problems that could arise in this approach, these having to do with the network protocol architecture used, the routing protocols in place on the two interfaces, and the application recovery requirements.

The use of redundant routers to ensure network availability is discussed in Chapter 6. Although it is simple to implement this redundancy, the author cautions the reader that it is the other components in the network that cause problems when using redundant routers. Crucial in these considerations is the providing of router independence for the end systems, and the author reviews several protocols for doing this, including passive RIP, proxy ARP, IRDP, DHCP, VRRP, and of course Cisco HSRP. The latter has proved its mettle in allowing transparency to the end systems, load balancing, and the prevention of routing black holes, but the author also stresses that care must be taken to ensure that efficiency is preserved and awareness must be made of the hardware limitations of the routers using HSRP. A very detailed discussion is given on how to protect against LAN segmentation. A real-world example is given that illustrates all of the concepts that the author discusses in this chapter.

Networks built on the hub-and-spoke topology are discussed in chapter 7. Such topologies are usually the result of legacy designs in enterprise businesses and evolve into more hierarchical tree topologies as the business grows. The author's goal in this chapter is to study to what extent the connectivity and fault tolerance of these kinds of network architectures can be improved. The proper routing protocols to use for these kind of topologies are discussed first, and, because of the HA requirement, must be chosen to be dynamic, despite the belief to the contrary that static routes would be sufficient for such simple network topologies. EIGRP is considered to be the routing protocol of choice in these kinds of topologies, and the author discusses in detail why this is the case.

The author directs his attention to the issues involved in HA when using Internet Service Providers with the discussion limited to the TCP/IP protocol. BGP is the protocol of choice here, due to the proliferation of routing domains in the Internet, and security issues are much more sensitive in such environments, as the author shows in great detail. In particular, an example is given of using network address translation to route return traffic. The author also discusses the case where there is a connection to two independent ISPs, providing redundancy to the system on the other side of the Internet. Although total Internet failures are relatively rare, their duration is usually long enough to entail a serious loss of revenue to businesses that depend on the Internet predominantly for this revenue. The author discusses several issues that arise in connecting through multiple ISPs, such as address space, since there are three different classes of public Internet addresses. The interdomain routing with Border Gateway Protocol entails the participation in routing over the Internet as an independent Autonomous System. This guarantees reachability from any other end system that has a path to any of the ISPs used.

In chapter 9, the author addresses availability issues when connecting through firewalls. The security reasons for the deployment of firewalls do not totally dominate the chapter. The author also discusses how the properties of firewalls affect the network design. He emphasizes that the goal in using firewalls is to ensure that the path through them is state sensitive and it must be known as to when they will appear to a router as an end-system or simply as another router. He explains using examples how these distinctions impact network design, and cautions that considerations of router mode versus end-system mode should not be confused with proxy-mode versus pass-through mode considerations. Also discussed are firewalls in a fully redundant network, and the high availability requirements dictate that even greater attention be paid to security issues, since breaches of security may prevent the availability goals. Examples of redundant firewalls with hot standby failover and with load sharing failover are also discussed in detail. The conflict between the needs of routing and the security requirements of firewalls is readily apparent throughout this chapter.

Any network engineer who is responsible for designing, building and maintaining networks will find this book useful. The author shares valuable design scenarios applicable for any environment. There seems to be a shortage of quality network engineering books covering proper network design. THIS BOOK CLOSES THE GAP!

This book is a fantastic, practical, detailed, readable reference for a huge range of very important networking topics relating to increasing the up-time of networks. It gives sample configurations for Cisco routers (with some reference to Bay/Nortel routers as well) in many environments (ISP connection, firewall, hub-and-spoke architecture, load-sharing, and so on), and provides supurb discussions of the decisions and trade-offs in the many ways of designing high-availablility networks. Difficult network problems, such as enabling backup data links for routers where the primary WAN interface fails "silently" (without a change in the interface status) are clearly addressed, with several detailed solutions presented, discussing the advantages, disadvantages and restrictions of each. There are none of those frustrating issues left for us to work out on our own, this is a tutorial book with all the answers, not a college textbook with questions. Redundant network components, including dual LAN adapters, LAN adapters with built-in dual ports, dual switches, routers with dual WAN interfaces, dual routers, dual DNS servers, dual firewalls, dual ISPs, and dual locations are all examined, showing what has to be done to actually get increased availability. Even though I likely won't be implementing these myself, I now know what I can ask of those who are configuring my routers, and I know how to look at network designs with a better knowledge about reliability and failure modes.

I pass ccna2.0 with 935/1000 today. All I have is this book and Boson exams. I've read my friend's Todd Lammle book. I think this book is much better than Todd's. Todd's is written for passing the exam. For the ICND book, you actally learn the CCNA stuff in depth. I strongely recommend this book for everyone who want to pass the CCNA2.0 with FULLY understanding.

I pass ccna2.0 with 935/1000 today. All I have is this book and Boson exams. I've read my friend's Todd Lammle book. I think this book is much better than Todd's. Todd's is written for passing the exam. For the ICND book, you actally learn the CCNA stuff in depth. I strongely recommend this book for everyone who want to pass the CCNA2.0 with FULLY understanding.

I read ICND by Cisco Press before. I found this book used on Amazon and bought it just because it was cheap. Now I can not put it down. This book is far better than Cisco Press' ICND. It has about 100 more pages than Cisco's. To me it is worth every minute spent to read this book.
I passed CCNA in December. So, I don't have the exam pressure. I am reading this just for fun and enjoying it.
I strongly recommend it over Cisco's ICND if you intent to take CCNA test.

I just finished reading this book cover to cover and feel very confident about moving on to the next stage of my CCNA preparation, practice tests and simulation! I've been using the CCExam software from CCStudy.com as well as a few other practice tests and am amazed how easy a lot of the questions were after reading this book. Just an indication of how comprehensive this book is.

More important, in my opinion, is the book's "readability"! I'm sure there are numerous books that cover the exact same information as this book yet might not be written in a manner that is clear and simple to understand, especially for Cisco newbies like myself. This book is just a lot of fun to read.

Finally, I really enjoyed the "real world" tone of this title. It isn't written for someone who's bound for the testing center, but rather for someone who needs to apply the knowledge at work in the field. I'm certain that I'll constantly be using this book as a reference even after passing the exam. Very cool.

All in all, I'd like to recommend ICND to the Cisco neophyte who's looking for that great "First Book" to start off his or her Cisco library. I'm really glad I got this book and I'm sure you will be too.

Good luck on your CCNA!

I pass ccna2.0 with 935/1000 today. All I have is this book and Boson exams. I've read my friend's Todd Lammle book. I think this book is much better than Todd's. Todd's is written for passing the exam. For the ICND book, you actally learn the CCNA stuff in depth. I strongely recommend this book for everyone who want to pass the CCNA2.0 with FULLY understanding.

Cisco Press is the way to go on Cisco exams. Great info for both the CCDA exam as well as on-the-job network analysis. Translates well for the CCDA exam.

I have several books that are cited to support full coverage for the difficult CCDA exam, none of which except the CISCO written books really lived up to their promise.
If CISCO are manageing the exam, then it make sense to train up with their books.
If you buy this box set, then read all and learn all you will pass the exam.
Don't waste your money trying to save pennies - - Get the real thing and pass first time. These book are as good as it gets.

After passing the CCNA exam I decided to pursue the CCDA certification and since the exam was developed by Cisco, why not use their material in order to pass the exam. What I found in this prep library is 3 of the best books out on the market.

While there is no one saying which book to start with, I recommend the Internetworking Technologies Handbook as the place to start. Starting with the basics, then LAN protocols, then WAN technologies, bridging and Switching, network protocols and finally routing protocols gives you the foundation to build on.

I then moved to the Designing Cisco Networks book, which can be used in a classroom without a hitch. This book covered topics like business solutions, designing topologies, building and testing prototypes and even has a sample exam and case studies.

Rounding out the set is the CCDA Exam Certification Guide which helps prepare you for the actual exam with topics like Applications, customer support, topologies and LAN design, Wan Design, documentation and case studies. Overall there seems to more than enough information to pass the exam.

...is to confuse the CCDA design exam with the CCNA support exam. There is NO new CCDA design exam - it is the same exam Cisco has been offering for some time now - #640-441. However, the CCNA support exam has been superceded by the new #640-507.

If one cannot match the correct certification book with it's correlating exam - maybe it is time to consider a different way to make a living.

This bundled pack is excellent. One should probably not invest hard earned cash on anything else. If one wants to learn the Cisco way - buy Cisco Press books. Also worth mentioning is the high quality paper, great type set, and superior graphics.

.... This box set if for the new CCDA
Exam! First look at the publish date, its June 2000. Next how about
going to the real source of true information, Cisco themselves. If you
go to Cisco Press (url)... You will see that this set is for the NEW
CCDA exam. In the word of Cisco Press it says,"Cisco CCDA
Preparation Library is a boxed set of three books. It contains two
books that comprise Cisco's suggested training path for the new CCDA
exam: Internetworking Technologies Handbook, Second Edition and
Designing Cisco Networks, along with the CCDA Exam Certification
Guide."...... ....The best advice is for anyone pursing a Cisco certification, is
to go to Cisco themselves and find out about the Exam and what books
they recommend for the Exams. Then buy the books for the exam. This
box set DOES cover the current exam, I used it and the info in it is
great not only to pass the exam but to give you a great understanding
of networking in general.

This package has everything that is needed to study for the CCNA 2.0 exam. And it doesn't stop there, the books are excellent source of reference materials for other Cisco curriculum and for the real world applications too.

The ICRC Book is really great. It explains in depth the entire process of operation. The technological Handbook introduces to you to the concepts of all the basic technologies The CD High performance with Desktop connectivity explains in depth the Virtual LAN and the FastEthernet technology. But the place of improvement could be questions that you can find in the exams. The questions that are asked at the end of each chapter are really Childish

T

ICRC book is excellent! This book is well written and covers most of the material. I also used the Sybex CCNA book by Todd Lammle, also a great book, which covered details that ICRC did not cover and vice versa. I did not crack open the internetworking technologies handbook to pass my CCNA exam.

THE TWO BOOKS CONTAINED IN THIS PACK WERE MY PRIMARY RESOURCES TO PREPARE FOR MY CCNA EXAM. "INTRODUCTION TO INTERNETWORKING TECHNOLOGIES" WAS A GREAT BOOK TO GIVE ALL OF THE INDEPTH AND BACKGROUND INFORMATION NECESSARY TO UNDERSTAND THE TECHNOLOGY, WHILE "ICRC" WAS A GREAT HANDS ON TOOL TO PROVIDE CONFIGURATION EXAMPLES AND SEE HOW THE STUFF ALL WORKS TOGETHER. PRACTICE QUESTIONS PROVIDED AFTER EACH CHAPTER OF "ICRC" WERE VERY HELPFULL. YOU CANNOT GO WRONG PURCHASING THIS TITLE. I PASSED EXAM 604-507 AND COULD NOT HAVE DONE IT WITHOUT THESE BOOKS!

The ICRC book is great! I haven't read much of the Internetworking Tech book, but I'm sure it is just as good.

This book is good for Call Mananger version 4.0+, but the latest IPT guide is probably Implementing Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Part 1 from May 2008. It covers Unified Call Manager version 6.0+, so be sure which version you need.

This is one of the best books, easy to read and understand. There are questions at the end of each chapter (which are short and to the point) that help you test yourself on what you learned.

As a technical instructor I have used this book for class lecture. This book has great organization, and coverage of the material. I reccomend this book to anyone looking for study material for CIPT.

This is the best Ciscopress book that I have read, and I have read a few. It explains everything very nicely from designing to implementing VOIP network, Cisco CallManager to handsets. I read this book and was then able to successfully implement VOIP/IPTEL network for the company I worked for. 100% worth the buy.

This book is first a general introduction to voice over internet protocol (VOIP) and to the specifics of the Cisco approach. The basic concept is simple, send your voice communications over the internet using packet switching is a lot cheaper than the traditional Bell system approach of circuit switching where your circuit is vastly underused.

Cisco has put their products together into a product line around their Cisco Unified CallManager product, a part of the Cisco direction called AVVID: Architecture for Voice, Video, and Integrated Data.

While this book has the obvious goal of getting you to pass the Cisco IP Telephony (CIPT - 642-444) exam, it goes beyond what most 'exam cram' books do and will make you much more knowledgable about actually working with the equipment and software. The book gives you a complete background rather than just a list of questions and canned answers.

I read this book and was able to configure two 1720 routers to communicate over a WAN without any problems. I would suggest getting one of the CCNA books for a reference guide. This book does not go into great details about the commands.

The author did a great job of presenting the relatively basic information on configuring Cisco routers. You will find quite a few useful IOS commands discussed in the book that will want to keep it as a handy reference. I would also suggest looking into getting "Cisco IOS for IP Routing" by Andrew Colton. That book would take you deeper into mechanics of modern routing protocols (EIGRP, OSPF, IS-IS, BGP), along with a discussion of Cisco IOS commands.

These authors know how to write technical literature that did not confuse me!

Our company uses IPX and Appletalk for various departments although we are moving with haste to an all IP shop. I found this book to help me with building a multiprotocol network and to better understand the details of IP routing. The book covered IP routing in depth and covered enough of IPX and Appletalk to help me optimize my network. I found the example network with the full IOS configuration files quite useful.

There is the CCNA certification which takes you down the path to learning about routers, LANs and WANs, but what if you don't want that you only need to know how to configure the router. The Cisco Pres has put together the book that tackles that very subject.

In 350 plus pages you'll begin with a good breakdown of the OSI model followed up with the basics of how to configure the router. The information has screen shots to show you what things should look like.

After that you move in the always challenging world of TCP/IP with routing protocols and access lists. This section has a great deal of information but you may want to check other sources for more detailed information.

You also go into areas like AppleTalk with LAN and WAN configuration, IPX, SAP and basic management of the router including time control. While most of the book is geared towards the beginner all skill levels should be able to find some useful information within the book.

I found that the information seems to be up to date including topics like Network Time Protocol and Simple Network Time Protocol. Overall a very good value for the money.

Who would have thought that a 350 page book on routing could be so comprehensive? This book is a perfect place to start for MCSE's who want to move onto the 'good stuff' - routing with Cisco routers. Use this and the Sybex CCNA Study guide and you'll get through the test no problems.

My approach to this book has been dictated from curiosity for this new technology more than for the implementation side of it. Mobile IP is a field where I have very little knowledge of this technology and needed to gain some background on it. My point of view will therefore ignore the configuration examples used in the book.

The authors did a great job in writing the book in a very simple English and using an informal style, which helps the reading by not making the text too tedious.

The first couple of chapters gave me a good overview of the basic principles of Mobile IP. The illustrations used in the book are very helpful to better explain the concepts described in the text. Some were a little too confusing because of all the acronyms and several times I had to give a quick glance at the pictures to resume myself the situation. The third chapter goes on with security issues that come back in almost all of the rest of the book. The fourth chapter goes in detail on how to set up a lab environment to apply the concepts explained in the rest of the book.

The following chapters show some basic case studies of mobile IP applications: Campus Mobility, Metro Mobility and Cisco Mobile Networks. These chapters require a good knowledge of tunneling, VPNs, routing and wireless concepts.

The last two chapters were more interesting for me as chapter 8 talked about scalability of the mobile IP solutions and the differences between different forms of IP addressing. The last part of the chapter shows some basic troubleshooting techniques. Chapter 9 called "A look ahead" is very valuable because it describes the various techniques discussed to bring the mobile IP technology to meet the IPv6 standard and what the idea of Cisco is in this area.

The book is thought as a companion book for studying and has the usual end-of-chapter questions that help the reader to check his understanding of the last things learned. The answers given in the Appendix A to all the questions are very explicative and help to review the entire concepts seen in the book.

A good book that has given me the basic understanding of the theory of Mobile IP. I suggest it both for those who want to have a look at Mobile IP and also to those who want a deeper understanding of the topic. A real-world case study would have given this book a top class touch.

Mobile IP Technology and Applications (ISBN 158705132x) is an introduction to IP mobility using an open-standard protocol called Mobile IP. There is a distinction made between true mobility and just "traveling" between different connections. This protocol enables users to keep their IP, stay connected, and allow others to find them while roaming between networks and equipment. In addition, detailed examples using real-world situations illustrate the applications of this technology. Advanced topics include reverse tunneling, firewalls, NAT, VPNs, authentication, scalability, and QoS.

Stefan Raab and Madhavi W. Chandra, authors, share their experience designing and developing network solutions using Mobile IP. Their credentials are impressive and give the learner confidence in the information they are imparting.

This book is designed for network administrators who are familiar with IP routing, protocols, applications, and Cisco IOS. Even though the real-world situations are generic, the configuration, troubleshooting, and management are explained using Cisco IOS. IT personnel who want to implement mobile technology can definitely benefit from this book as it explains the basics thoroughly before giving detailed examples and explanations. The index is complete; there is not a glossary. At the end of each chapter are review questions, so this book could easily be used in a classroom or in self-study. There are two appendices: one contains the answers to the chapter questions and the other contains the SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) MIB (Management Information Base) objects supported by Cisco IOS Mobile IP.

Raab and Chandra organized their book into nine chapters, each of which is a facet of Mobile IP. After an introduction of concepts and requirements of mobility and wireless networking, a detailed discussion of the Mobile IP protocol includes features, functions, and components. As with any network today, there are security concerns with protocol authentication and dynamic keying. The material presented in these early chapters is used in the scenarios in following chapters.

Mobility solution examples are provided for basic topologies, client-based Mobile IP, high availability, AAA servers, reverse tunneling, firewall and NAT traversal, and integration with VPN technologies. Basic configuration is introduced which leads into integration topics of redundancy, QoS, and VPN. The management and operation discussion leads to Home Address, scalability, and server management.

Future trends and uses for Mobile IP conclude the topics of this book: layer 2 integration challenges, Mobile IPv6, unstructured mobility, and ad hoc networking.

This book follows the linear, logical model of textbook organization that progresses from basic facts, to advanced topics, and concludes with end-to-end solutions. The authors feel that this book also enables someone to jump in at any chapter and navigate the subject by features and environment in which they are interested. They have created cross-references to assist readers who do not want to use the book in linear form. This works well for users with previous knowledge of the subject.

The examples, figures, and illustrations are clear, concise, and designed to help learners understand a complex subject. Cisco IOS knowledge is prerequisite, although the authors' expertise and explanations give logic behind implementation and options.
This book deserves a rating of 5 (highest) and is recommended for IT personnel wanting to move into true "mobility."

Mobile IP Technology and Applications
Reviewer: Glenn Bradley, Senior Network Engineer
Reviewer Certification: CCDA, CCNA, CCNP, ISSP

The authors have given us a text that serves as an excellent introduction to Mobile IP technologies. Using real-world scenarios limited enough in scope, they convey how Mobile IP is currently being used and hint at the size of an offering it is destined to become.

I would have liked to see a little more focus on the trend of Mobile IP in the `contained' workplace. However, the examples of PDA's, laptop's, fleet service applications, etc. are well laid out, easy to understand and presented in an order that leads the reader from an introductory approach through some reasonably high level discussion.

Like most recent Cisco Press books I have been looking at there is a minimum of page-flipping, back and forth to get from the text to the figures and tables. This may not seem like a monumental accomplishment but if you go through as many books as I do; the little things can become quite annoying. I should also mention here that another of my peeves; poor editing, is NOT present. Good solid references, annotations, etc.

If you are planning on getting into the Mobile IP world, or already have and feel you've missed something, I would highly recommend this book. It is actually an enjoyable read (for those of us who enjoy technical books) and I believe you'll find yourself breezing through so keep a highlighter or some post-it's near by to mark the high points.

In summary; a well written, readable text beneficial for entry level `enquiring minds' but thorough enough to serve as a reference for folks who are already deploying this technology.

Good book, strong coverage of Mobile IP. I definitely recommend this book to someone who is interested in Mobile IP basics, or who is planning to deploy a mobile IP solution. The authors build from the basics quite well. The first couple chapters effectively present the basics of Mobile IP. As should be expected, a basic routing knowledge is assumed on the part of the reader. This is certainly appropriate for a topic such as mobile IP. The background on wireless technologies provides enough detail to support the subsequent discussion, but does not become a pure tutorial on wireless infrastructure. The illustrations and examples are straightforward, and add value to the discussion.
The organization of the chapters allows the experienced reader to skip forward to an appropriate chapter. The discussion on the lab configuration is particularly helpful. It saves much of the time we often spend defining the lab environment to be practical and yet reflect enough of the real world to be useful. The evolution to larger, real world class environments is certainly of value. The insight to actual deployment of a solution helps to bring lab data into context. The examples and considerations in the latter part of the book, chapters 5-8, address many of the issues actual deployments may encounter. The ability to address as many of these issues during planning, instead of discovering them during the initial deployment certainly can make enabling a mobile solution less challenging.
Chapter 9 was of specific interest because we have a pending migration to IPv6. Any amount of insight into IPv6 world is of value.
On the negative side, the title is slightly misleading; the "Applications" referred to in the title is the application of mobile IP, vice applications that run over mobile IP. The subtitle is to the point "Real-world solutions for Mobile IP configuration and management."

I like the approach that this book takes in laying out the principal concepts of Mobile IP. There is good discussion about many of the realities of useful mobile ip implementation including handoff scenarios, address bindings and security associations. The latter chapters will be especially useful for those who already have their mobile ip merit badge. Worth the price of admission, I recommend this as a useful and practical study guide.