Cisco Systems Books

This is a great kit nothing else on the market offers as much as this does for the money. The Video clips through out the four courses makes understanding concepts easy without spending thousands of dollars at a school. Dont get me wrong nothing beats hands on practice at a school but if you dont have the time and money this kit is for you. Add the CCNP Virtual Lab to help you gain hands-on understanding. I highly recommened this kit and the CCNP Virtual Lab.

I know my subject line sounds harsh but after being burned by the CCNA eTrainer I loss all faith in Todd Lammle's eTrainer material. My biggest gripe is that I rushed out on release day to pick up the (price) CCNA eTrainer only to find it riddled with bugs. I continued to check (website)hoping to find some sort of patch or addon that would fix the bugs and restore COMPLETE functionality but none was found! This is a clear case of a (...) company failing to care about customer service. If I noticed bug I am sure Sybex's quality control department saw them also but they failed to correct them because at the time there was a rush to get any sort of eTrainer material to market. That probably explain why they flew off the shelf so quickly. Despite my displeasure with the eTrainer I prefer his books over Global Knowledge, McGraw Hill etc.... I would like to see Sybex take responsibility for duping thousands of customers out of their hard earned money!!!!!

This product gets 1 star for its track record. I didn't see anythng below 1 star.

No sim is perfect but being able to supplement learning from sim based on Cisco hardware is a godsend. The most important benefit is the ability to test out scenarios without damaging a real network. For what it is, it's still better than no accessible Cisco network at all but improvements are always welcome.

Hi,

This study guide is OK, but my impression is that you can not pass the test with this alone. There is lots of errors in the study material and review-tests, especially I found the "Dial" chapter could be much better. The review tests are much more simple than the "real" test, but you can still learn your weak areas and study them further. If you are studying for CCNP and like "e-learning" this is a good supplement.

I bought CCNA Virtual Lab e-trainer for CCNA and found it a great. This package is ok but my initial impression is it is little better than the books. Flashing arrows and speech is nice but there is nothing to beat good learner interaction while reading the chapter and just questions at the end. E-learning has a long way to go to beat a good book with appropriate questions. I have given 4 stars for good clear content and presentation not for the e-learning section

Ordered 4 books - two new; two used. All of them seem perfectly unused and the order arrived sooner than promised.

I'm taking Cisco Communication class at school, and we had to buy this book. So I didn't have any choice :) But the book is ok, although there are some typos and stupid questions sometimes. However, everything is well exaplained.

I am A CCNA Instructor & have used this book extensively.
There are errors but the errata is published on the ciscopress web site. Besides this, this is an excellent reference for somebody wanting to get hands on experience on cisco equipment.
For anybody studying for the CCNA exam, I highly recommend this book, along with CCNA Intro & ICND by Wendell Odom.

This book has excessive typographical errors, causing students to make mistakes in the Cisco lab, and ultimately making the learning experience much more difficult.

Some chapters, such as Chapter 3 (OSPF) use different IP addressing schemes in each lab, causing students to waste time reconfiguring the routers repeatly and reducing the amount of time available to spend on the more important lab portions that are specific to OSPF.

Don't use this book unless you have no alternative lab manuals.

Did anyone at Cisco Press try to complete these labs before publishing this book?

I found this book is very useful, it is better orgnized than Todd's book. It first build all the information you needed to understand the following material regarding config C5K, ANE,etc.

I found it best read with other books such as Cisco Switched Internetworks(McGRraw-Hill).

Overall this book is far better than any other I have read on the same subject. I failed the first time I took the test so I bought the book and I passed. Good examples and real depth to what you see when entering certain commands. I've used all the books from Syngress so far and have passed all tests.

too sketchy,too sketchy, very few config exmaples. guaranteed to fail the exam if using this book alone as a test prep. Richard A Deal's same title is much much fleshier.

Syngress' ICRC & ACRC are very good. 4 stars.

If you use this book alone you will fail! I have passed 7 certification exams and never failed one until now, by one question! Book mentions next to nothing about SAINT, SAGE, SAMBA, and Phoenix ASICs. Chapters on 1900/2820 and 3000 appear to be written by a different author who is less qualified with both Cisco switches and technical writing! Book does not clearly cover the stated Cisco objectives! Technical Inaccuracies throughout the book! The questions at the end of the chapters are way too easy! The questions on the CD are the same as in the book! Why did I buy this book? Buy the Cisco press book, it has none of these shortcomings! Buy the way, anyone want to buy this book from me - cheap?

I think, for a "Basic" CIM does much more than that, explaining throughly couple of concepts which helps to understand the fundamentals of Cisco VoIP, even though almost everything is copied or rearranged from CCO. For the price paid though, instead of the old-fashioned cheesy text style with a few glossary popups and some really easy labs (where you have to type only a few commands and you're done), one should expect many animated graphics, maybe some movies (check: Intro and Outro on CD-ROM :) ) and labs for people that will support this technology eventually... At least they recommended having a RealPlayer G2 installed on your computer. Not to mention some "tricky" IE double openings and "Cannot find server" messages. I assume CiscoPress knows that nobody out there is interested in having a 2001 looking CIM, with router simulators built-in, where you can practice any combination of commands and troubleshoot, related to "Basic" VoIP. Don't worry people, you can still buy 2,3 routers with VoIP modules, at least 2 PBXes (second hand are cheaper), connect'em to a LEC CO and play all day long! ....

I purchased this book so that I could position myself for upcoming technologies at my work. I was pleasantly surprised at how "instructor" like the CIM was. I felt like I had a full Cisco Instructor led course by the end. It took around 35 hours to complete the course in total. The simulations are just like telneting into real equipment. 90% of the commands work to a degree but some have been disabled, I think to ease the burden onthe simulator. Which is why I knocked off a star. The labs are well thought out and make you think more as you progress.

Overall I felt confident enough to tkae the associated exam, and I passed. Now I am reviewing this package in preparation for the CCIE exams.

This is great for the hands-on stuff. Maybe supplementing it with the Cisco Press Course Book for VoIP/FR/ATM when it becomes available would be a good move.

The content of this CD is very good however. This is the 3rd CIM i have used - i realise that some reviewers 'miss the point' about these CD's but i myself have been very happy with all of them. They have got good resale value too.

I haven't taken the exam yet, but one of the reviewers has.

Overall , very very good.

If you're looking to learn basic Cisco VOIP (technology and commands) this is an excellent resource. The text part of the course isn't spectacular (you could get the same material off CCO), but the simulated labs were a great way to solidify the material and (in my mind) justified the cost of the course.

I should point out though that some parts (particularly Section 3) seem to have been written by someone who's just repeating things s/he's read somewhere else without really understanding it, e.g.:

"What the party at the other end of the line hears isn't really the original speech; it's an analogy of the original speech. This is why the signal is called an analog signal."

(it's called analog because it's a continuous signal as opposed, say, to a discrete digital signal -- it has nothing to do with "analogy")

or

"PCM (ITU G.711 standard) uses an 8-bit numeric code based on one of the coding processes called a-law or mu-law. PCM employs a uniform quantization process, meaning that PCM simply translates volume into 8-bit data without regard to the previous sample. Because the interval between each sample is relatively quick (8,000 samples per second, or one sample per 125 microseconds), it is unlikely for an enormous difference in volume to exist from one sample to the next sample."

(the first part is wrong - quantizing is not uniform for G.711 and the last part is confused : differences in successive sample values is relative to ADPCM, not PCM)

If you're looking for basic Cisco VOIP over IP (no coverage of frame relay or ATM), this is a pretty good resource ... just be on the lookout for some pretty "original" views of voice technology.

I passed the CCNA exam over a year ago and since that time I have been working with routers both as a network administrator and an instructor. Recently I worked with someone looking to connect all his WAN location with switches and I finally found a book, the only book to cover this are. Naturally Cisco Press was the publisher.

Covering Exam 640-410, CCNA WanSw, the book does a fairly good job of breaking down the exam and the objectives. In Part I, the Quick Start, you cover topics like Serial communications, narrow and broadband including J1, T1, Y1, DS3, E3 and SONET circuits, digital voice. Also Frame Relay with DLCI, IARP and NNI is covered.

Finally the section breaks down ATM and cell technology, IP addressing in both the classless and classful environments. With Part II, the installation of the switches, the 8400, 8600, 8550 and 8220 are the primary focus.

Wan switching topologies and technologies like flat, tiered and structured topologies are tackled first. Then you move onto IGX and BGX switches, troubleshooting and the alarms sections. Overall the book does cover the exam but there is very little coverage of the commands needed or no practice exam questions on a cd-rom.

Since this the only choice out there you do need this and I think it will help greatly but updates are needed.

Part I of the book gives a good grounding in WAN technology. However, Part II can be inconsistent, providing varying levels of detail across the various products. Some WAN concepts are assumed knowledge, which isn't helpful if you are new to the area or come from a LAN background.

This is a fairly good book on the topic of WAN switching.

This book deals with IGX/BPX/MGX equipment that is used to build WAN cloud. Part I deal in general with the technologies and characteristics of Frame-relay, ATM, voice, T1, T3 etc, Part II show you the hardware installation, configuration, and a bit of troubleshooting. What I find is: - Part I cover Frame-relay, serial comm, narrowband transmission quite well, but not so good on broadband, voice, and I afraid totally failed to teach in ATM chapters. I think you have to refer to other books if you really really want to know any of the 7 chapters well. - Part II did not connect well with part I very well. Part II start off with hardware installation and configuration which you can download from Cisco Web product documentation - but the book of course some time has a little bit more information. It also list all the modules and card that you can use in each box. Then it show you how to do initial and network configuration. Very basic, and after reading the whole book I still do not know how does IGX/BPX switch or route a data - do they keep some kind of a switching/routing table - how do I view this table? It was never explained. Also, although we know from the book that BPX used ATM cell on the trunk - the IGX/BPX configuration portion never mention anythink about ATM configuration - and I missing something here? - The last chapter on Network Alarm and troubleshooting is quite useful. All in all, if you are the project leader of a WAN switching project, this book is not going to get you through. If you are just helping along, this book does help. But there appears to be no other book in this category.

No doubt explaining the access and aggregation network -where legacy and emerging technologies intermingle based on business, regulatory and technology factors- is a very ambitious topic.

For the most part, this book provides a great introduction to the subject matter that allows the reader to see where the different puzzle pieces fit. If there's a better book that truly provides a deeper insight into DSL architectures, I haven't found it.

There are aspects that could be improved, especially when it came to the part I was interested in the most, the discussion of IRB, RBE, PPPoE and L2TP. The different subsections were a bit inconsistent in their explanations, sometimes going through the protocol stack graphically, sometimes not (unfortunately), sometimes using terminology between figures and text that did not match up 100%. That part looked a bit patched together from different sources, but nevertheless, despite that flaw, it provides the best summary of these technologies in 30 pages or so I have seen anywhere.

Given the fact Cisco seems to have retired its DSLAM product line the lengthy discussion on it seems a bit superfluous, plus it does not add a lot to the understanding of the network architecture concepts I wished to gain from this book.

In summary, I'd buy the book all over again, and if the author decided to revamp it (it's still in the first edition from '03) this could evolve to be a very good reference book on access and aggregation architectures for wireline telcos.

If you are looking for a book that covers poorly drawn conclusions and pitiful insite into the actual technology of DSL, then this is your book. I only hope my kids aren't forced to read this type of stereo instruction manual to better themselves in the world. The author has no technical knowledge of the subject matter at hand and I got the distinct impression that there was a technologist next to him spoon feeding him buzz words.

Compiled and edited by technology knowledge transfer expert and specialist Wayne Vermillion, End-To-End DSL Architectures is a straightforward guide to exploiting Digital Subscriber Line services to save time and money in one's business software architecture. Individual chapters address the basics of DSL technology, advice for planning the evolution of one's network, guidelines for implementing DSL technology anywhere in any network, step-by-step instructions, a wealth of information specific to all DSL varieties around the world, all six architectures that implement DSL with TCP/IP, solutions to common problems and much more. Enhanced with "bonus appendixes" providing an overview of ATM as well as a tour of Cisco Long-Reach Ethernet, End-To-End DSL Architectures is a highly recommended instructional resource and reference.

This book provides an interesting in-depth look at DSL architectures and technology. It begins with an introduction to DSL and competitive technologies, and discusses the different varieties of DSL along with ADSL modulation techniques. After a brief review of electrical signal characteristics and the basic telco infrastructure, DSL specific technical issues are looked at such as cross-talk and interference, and impairments in the infrastructure itself, like load coils and impedance mismatches. These DSL architecture challenges and their associated mitigation techniques; automatic rate adaptation, SNR margins, and error correcting algorithms are discussed at length.

TCP/IP and ATM technologies are then reviewed quickly, as well as an exploration of Cisco's Easy IP, before an in-depth look at the main six end-to-end DSL technologies and their enabling protocols is begun. IRB, RBE, the increasingly popular PPPoE, and MPLS are all examined to name just a few. Implementation considerations as well as deployment advantages and disadvantages of the main 6 are discussed.

The Cisco line of DSL products is looked at next, starting with customer premise equipment (CPE) in the home or small office environment. Product offerings such as the SOHO 70 and Cisco 820 series of routers are examined first, leading up to an in depth look at the products designed for the exchange or central office environment like the Cisco 6000 series of layer 2 DSL Access Multiplexers (DSLAMs) and layer 3 IP-DSL switches. Cards, modules, and chassis configuration options are covered.

The next major section of the book briefly reviews AAA, SSG, and the Radius security protocols, before delving into probably one of the more important, and lengthy chapters of the book, Cisco IOS Configurations. This chapter leads one through the construction of an end-to-end DSL architecture implementation from the CPE device to the central office core device. Each step of the configuration process on each device is carefully explained, complete with plenty of IOS configuration examples to clearly illustrate the concepts presented. Some advanced programming topics and fail-over / redundancy planning and configuration, are also presented toward the end of the chapter.

The book finishes up with a discussion of Cisco's graphical management system for IP DSL devices, the Cisco DSL Manager (CDM). CDM deployment, device management, device monitoring, and fault / performance management are all examined

Overall, this book serves as a welcome addition to any technical bookshelf. Whether a seasoned DSL technical expert looking for that book for occasional reference, or a beginner looking to learn the ins and outs of DSL technology, the book is well written for both audiences. The book provides both real world examples and enough technical background information to thoroughly examine all topics covered. For those looking to take one of the applicable Cisco technology exams, the book also provides over 100 insightful and challenging questions to test your knowledge and prepare for the exam.

Overall, this is a very good intermediate level text on Cisco firewalls. It is not for the beginning networker. Having an understanding of topics such as VLANS, access lists, NAT, PAT, and routing protocols is a prerequisite, if one wants to utilize the text to its fullest potential. With this understanding, this book becomes a powerful reference on setting up a Cisco PIX firewall. It walks one through the necessary steps of configuring a firewall in various different networking environments. The scenarios provided in the text can be adapted for most small to medium-sized networks. As one continues reading, the level and depth of material gets progressively more difficult. This increased difficulty may appeal to the advanced networker. Topics in this category include VPNs, attack guards, and enterprise management will not make sense to the novice, but add value and depth to the text.

Simply put, this book is a good reference and study aide on the topic of PIX firewalls. It is worth reading, if you are interested in learning basic topics or even some advanced ones. What you get from this book totally depends on the amount of time and work you put into reading and/or studying the text. This book will remain on my shelf as a valuable reference as I could not find much to fault.

I purchased this book to prepare Cisco's 642-521 certification exam on the PIX firewall. There is alot of useful information and the book is pretty thorough. However, I got a couple of PIX's and tried to go through all the labs which follow the chapters. Not everything is covered. Chapter 10 on Routing has no labs at all. Almost no lab works as written. Mostly there are small errors like using a hostname which has not been mapped to an IP address. Some are pretty extreme. For example, the labs in Chapter 16 try to connect servers on remote lans without setting up either routing or NAT. The also do nothing to allow the IPsec traffic through the firewall. There is an access list created for NAT in step 2 but it is never applied to anything. Missing from the solution are the statements:

nat (inside) 0 access-list nonat
sysopt connection permit-ipsec
route outside 10.0.2.0 255.255.255.0 192.168.2.1

It works once you add these commands, but they are also missing from the errata on the ciscopress web site. That includes several pages of corrections to the text without any corrections to the labs.

If the labs had worked, I would have given it five stars, but since they don't, it only gets three. This seems to be a common problem with Cisco Press. The extreme worst case is CCNP Practical Studies: Routing. That is a whole book of just routing labs but again, hardly any work as written.

I grabbed the book as I got in to a project where I needed to configure Failover PIX system. Given no prior experience with PIX, this book was very handy. However, I still had to consult Cisco website for useful and up-to-date information for PPTP, MPPE, etc.

This book, while obviously having loads of information, is not as helpful as its price should indicate. I found many small typos throughout the book, and there are numerous times that I found actually incorrect information. After studying this book very heavily, I found that it only mentioned about two-thirds of what I actually found on the test (CSPFA 642-521). When I took the test, I was completely surprised by much of the information. The packaged test in the book is really just a test on the book itself, and does not represent the actual test very well (CSPFA 642-521). This book does have a lot of information, and can be used as a study guide, but I would absolutely recommend buying another book to supplement it, or taking a course.

I've used four CCSP-related books in preparing for teaching the CCSP subject material, and have found none of them completely up to the task. The All-In-One covers the SECUR and CSPFA material reasonably well, though starts to fall down with CSVPN and is mediocre at best for CSIDS. CSI? Well that gets all of four pages of bullet points reprinted from the official Cisco exam content and the recommendation to go and read the free Cisco SAFE whitepapers.

As with all CCSP books, much of the text is borrowed (some might say plagiarised, given no referencing is used) from the official Cisco documentation. Picking a page pretty much at random: p 466 discusses Split Tunnelling for the VPN 3000 Concentrator; the text here is a lightly edited copy from the (free) Cisco VPN 3000 Config Guide, rel 4.1, p 271 (13.35).

This book has many factual and editorial errors (e.g. picking random examples from my annotations: figures in Chapter 24 are all off-by-one, IP addresses given in screen grabs in Chapter 15 are incorrect; the description of HMAC on p. 292 confuses the shared key with a private key) to the point that causes the reader to question the validity of the material (perhaps this is intentional to force students to check everything!). Even some of the copied Cisco documentation has errors introduced: e.g. the diagrams of the IDS architecture in Chapter 24 are incorrect when compared to the original Cisco documentation, and the text. Pretty much all of Chapter 25 (CSIDS) is out of date and no longer relevant to the current (2004) exams. As of March 2004, the publisher's web site has not released any errata.

The material covering the SECUR and CSPFA exams is about 80-90% of what you'll need to review to prepare for those exams; for the remaining 10-20% and for the other exams you WILL need to refer to other references (i.e. the Cisco documentation). For CSIDS and CSI, this book will be of very little help.

Having said all of the above, I can vouch for this book being about the best of a bad bunch. None of the competing books seem to be any better!

The CCSP all in one is The best books I have read by far covering all the important objectives covering Cisco Security. The book covers 3.6 auto-initiation very clear and I was able to pass the CSVPN easily. The book takes a no-nonsense approach and I will find myself using it as an excellent reference now and in the future. Well written and easy to understand if you are preparing for the CCSP, you need to include this as a must.

this book has soo many errors in it isnt even funny....all around this book blows giant chunks!

Cisco recently dropped the 640-507 exam and released the 640-607 CCNA exam, so what has changed? With the content basically staying the same as it true with the objectives, then this set of books is mostly updates for the new exam.

Book 1, The Internetworking Technologies Handbook, is still an excellent source of information and I didn't see any changes at all. The book is a good reference however I think it should be dropped from this library and replaced with other Cisco Press books such as CCNA Practical Studies, CCNA Flash Card Practice Kit as well as CCNA Router and switch e-Sim.

Book 2, ICND course book by Steve McQuerry, which has been updated is an excellent resource for the exam as well as teaching for the classroom environment. About the only missing from the book is a cd with practice questions and a simulator to coincide with the book.

Book 3, CCNA Examination Guide by Wendell Odom, is by far one of the most detailed and documented books covering the new exam, and it I was impressed with the cd included and found the exam questions to be far tougher than the actual exam. Overall still a very good value.

This library the best to get started on Cisco hardware and networking. It is not necessary for the exprerienced users wishing to take the exam; these should consider getting the Study guide on its own along with CCNA Practical Studies (promotional offer). Internetworking technologies, the first book in the set is wordy and cumbersome.

I started out with only this book as guide through the Cisco SNA/IP integration world. It was a good help although unreadable as a book, it's really a reference guide (nothing else than you'll find at CCO). It takes you through all the options there are available with Cisco equipment to integrate the SNA networks into your existing network, but does not really help out in the real complex configurations. i.e. it'll discuss CIP and APPN/HPR, CIP and TN3270, but not CIP, APPN/HPR and TN3270 which is quite common in redundancy cases. There are also quite a few mistakes in the examples (mainly wrong picture for the example), but this will keep you awake. What's really missing is the Cisco specifics, like APPN/ISR and not releasing session, which eliminates the need for APPN/HPR configurations (which are far worse to think up). All in all, an ok reference for on the shelve and still a good guide to check your options when needing to integrate SNA and LAN with Cisco equipment.

This book is basically a printout of the Cisco website. However it does read a little better than some of the Cisco web pages, and it since it covers content you'll need to pass your CCIE, its a must for every candidates collection. A really helpful companion to this book is the CCIE DLSw+ quiz

If you are trying to teach yourself the details of DLSw+, RSRB, IRB, etc, this book is full of complete sample configurations. Yes, you can find this same stuff on the Doc CD if have an hour to spare finding what you are looking for. I would particularly recommend this book to CCIE candidates because you will have these IOS documentation books at your disposal during the hands-on lab. You might as well start learning where to find things: before the lab.