Cisco Systems Books

I would save yourself some time by looking for other books. I was also daunted by this book's size and determined to master the material solely based on earlier reviews. So I read this book several times and have the following comments:

The organization of OSPF material has the following drawbacks: a) lack of context, the commands are covered only after some theory is given in a dry definition form. This is great, you may say, but to me it was not easy to put the definitions into context. The material for OSPF is mostly from the Cisco OSPF Design Guide (read those skimpy pages to get the most understanding of OSPF). So it looks like from the OSPF design guide, they seperated the theory and interspersed it with some other text and moved the configuration towards the chapter end. The second OSPF chapter requires serious apology to the readers: inter area routing and external routing are impossible to describe and make students understand without introducing redistribution(this is introduced only at the end). However, this makes the material extremely difficult to understand.

EIGRP is OK.

BGP is another complex set of definitions, and several reads are needed before even trying to piece together the definition and understand how to put everything together.

So: for OSPF start from OSPF design guide by Cisco. Not sure about where to go for EIGRP and BGP: I got a hang of those material by several reads of the Paquet and Teare material.

Very good for the exam; you have to read this if you want to pass Cisco's Routing Exam.

Please note that this book is for a retired exam. The new exam replacing this one is Building Scalable Cisco Internetworks (BSCI) 640-901
Don't waste your money!

This book is good enough to pass the test. However, it does not go deep enough into covering IP routing protocols. If you want to take it a step (or two) further, check out "Cisco IOS for IP Routing" by Andrew Colton. That book should give you a lot more information on dynamic IP routing (RIP, EIGRP, OSPF, IS-IS, and BGP).

There are, I believe, at least two benchmarks against which one could rate this book. They are:
1) Does the book provide good coverage of the topics presented in the book, and
2) Does the book provide good coverage for all the topics you'll be tested for in BSCI (640-901).

I also believe that it would be a mistake to judge this book against a benchmark it wasn't designed for, hence, I'll confine my comments and rating from perspective 1.

The authors have done a good job with the topics presented in the book. I would recommend this book to anyone who is considering studying for the CCNP/CCIP certification and doesn't know where to begin. That said, I would suggest you look below at the list of books and testing software I found useful and necessary to prepare for the BSCI test.

Base guide: This book
Supplement for IS-IS: Lammel's BSCI book
MUST REFERENCES: Jeff Doyle's Vol 1 and 2
Testing software: Companion CD with Lammel's book, and Boson BSCI exam #2.

A few words about the test itself and how I fared. The test was tougher than I had anticipated. I say tough because, I felt that the questions and the choices were loosely worded to leave me with some doubt of my choices. So far, I've always completed the tests in somewhere between half and two-thirds the time-limit, however, it took me almost the allotted duration to complete this exam. To be candid, I felt I got lucky to have scored 907.

Note: Perhaps this review might be put in a better perspective if I said, that I've been away from hands-on experience with networks for the last five months. Prior to the break, I had worked in the internetworking industry for about five years(effectively) out of six.

I wish the best of luck to other pursuers!

I used this book and Cisco Press's ICND to prepare for my NA exam and passed it with a nearly perfect score. This book covered the details needed for the exam well. When I was taking my NP/DP, I came back to this book to review details needed for the Remote Access portion of the NP track. This is where this book really shines. WAN protocols are covered in great detail. Use this book for the WAN protocols and ICND for the switching portion. With both of these books, the routing portion of the NA exam will be covered sufficently.

Using this book as my primary study source, I passed CCNA with 967/1000. It's a terrific book - well organized, has all the information that was on CCNA and more. I would have given this book a 5, but there were many minor errors in it (which you can easily catch once you know your stuff very well). I'd recommend this book to anyone with at least basic networking knowledge, who'd like to pass CCNA, or would just like to learn more about Cisco hardware & IOS syntax, TCP/IP & IPX, routing, LAN/WAN hardware, etc.

No doubt this CCNA book is very easy to read, unlike the ones from Cisco Press. I am reading it alongside with the Exam Cram & found out that this Prep book actually has less info on Switching & VLANs as compared to the smaller size Cram, which is ODD.

The 1st edition CCNA Exam Cram which I got, actually shows what the IOS looks like when booting Cisco switches, it also shows how to enter the IP address & netmask, but none of that in the Prep. I don't have the newer 2nd edition CCNA Exam Cram, therefore I can't comment.

I notice that the CCNA for Dummies also left out the IOS part in Switches & maybe it's not that important in the exam, but "Less in Prep & More in Cram"... goodness, the "Less is more" sounds about right.

To conclude, I think the CCNA focus more on routing than switching, it is better to get the CCNP or the new CCIP to get you a job.

Hope the Exam Prep series can find a new home soon...
The Exam Cram is now owned by QUE & called it Exam Cram 2.

I highly recommend all Coriolis Exam Prep and Exam Cram books and the Exam Prep "Routing and Switching" is no different. I just passed the CCNA exam today after reading both the Exam Cram and Exam Prep books. They were a tremendous help.I have used this series of books to acquire 3 certifications in the IT field.

Coriolis has designed these books to work as a 2-part system. Step 1, read the larger and more detailed Exam Prep book to gain a thorough understanding of the material. Step 2, read the Exam Cram book to prepare you for the test itself. Reading both books gives you a solid foundation of understanding and excellent preparation for the exams themselves.

I feel skipping either book is cheating yourself of knowledge and will make obtaining the certification more difficult.

I have heard that Coriolis is having problems and maybe going out of production. I hope not. Their Exam Prep and Exam Cram books are some of the best on the market and been a valuable resource in my career development.

I used this book and the Exam Cram series only to study for my CCNA 2.0 exam and passed with little trouble. The Exam Cram has a few errors but nothing that will cause you much grief. I highly recommend the Exam Prep Series to all test takers.

Thus far the whole Amazon Market place from A-Z has been great. The entire experince from finding the correct material to ordering it through via: e-commerce was wonderful. I received my Cisco prep exam within a couple of days. Chris was the gentlemen that I purchased the set from. I e-mail him previuosly to get this input before actually purchasing the material. The set is in really good condition no markings at all. I highly recommend "Amazon's Marketplace".

The Preparation library was extremely detailed, and helpful. It has good examples, and review questions, and the CD-ROM of test questions was especially useful. The Preparation library explains every topic in great detail, including IPX, GNS, and SAP filters; much more than was actually needed to pass the exam. With the preparation library, and some additional sample tests, I scored very well on the exam. I would definitely recommended it for your CCNA studying.

This is the best book set for the exam preparation. I got a 967/1000 in the exam!!!. These books go into every topic of the exam deeply. The questions as well as the practice exam (in the cdrom) are the definitively training to pass the exam.

These books cover everything that I ran into on my CCNA test. I read them front to back and passed with 926!

The only thing you should be worried about if you just plan on buying these books to read, is that you'll need to get hands on practice with routers and switches!... you can pass without hands on, but it makes things a lot easier if you can work with them.

If you're wanting to prepare yourself for Cisco's most popular networking certification, this is a terrific way to do it. This book will do a excellent job of helping you master the concepts. Remember those teachers in high school who would hand out a study guide, and then the test would be the exact same thing? By the way, make sure to explore the questions on the bundled CD! Many people who have failed the exam complain of the language and wording it is written in, and these practice questions will aid you in your familiarity with "Cisconese".

This is a good reference book, but don't count on it to teach you how to set up a Cisco device or any networking. Even though it is fairly current, I have found a few differences between it and IOS 12.4 T.

this is another all in one book that i have, the other one is cisco ios cookbook. what i found that this book is very good after using it for some time, and also the writing style makes me easy to understand it very well.

i like the part where the author give comment on each line after a command to tell the reader what does that command do.

this book cover wide variety of things, and honestly i haven't read and tried all of the parts, but from what i have read and tried, this book gives very good detail in setting up tunnel and its security, it did help me understand how to set it up from scratch while i didn't know about it at all before.

in qos part, this is why i give this book 4/5, it just tell you briefly what each type of qos method does what it doesn't really give you an example of working configuration. i would like to see the author give an example from a real life configuration, suggestion to choose which type that we should use for particular case or even maybe combining few different type.

another suggestion is maybe to update the book with more information, and more commands that newer ios supports.

my recommendation is to get this book along with cisco ios cookbook, i am pretty sure it will cover the part where this book is missing and vise versa. you might also find this book is easier to read and understand than cookbook as well.

I bought this book for my Master's research paper on Cisco IOS.

I have found this book to be a good source on IOS's architecture. It has approximately 120 pages dedicated to general internetworking fundamentals such as differences betwen RIP, OSPF, and EIGRP.

The rest of the book is dedicated to IOS commands and proper syntax usages. This is a great reference book and good overview of networking concepts.

This is a great book. It covers the basics of IOS and will give the intermediate and advance users more than they have bargained for.

What can I say. Nutshell books are great. I own dozens of them and they are almost always great refererence manuals. This one is pretty good too.

I am a beginner to technical certs -- CCDA will be my first one. That being the case, this book often confuses more than educates, because of poor editing/proofreading. Some sentences are incomplete, conflict with other text, or are just outright mistakes. This also applies to the practice test -- some of the test's "correct" answers are simply WRONG, when compared to the text in the book.

If you are like me, and would rather learn without the distraction of grammar, spelling, and other errors, KEEP SHOPPING. I wish I had.

Not as good as others say, as far as the exam is concerned!

I like the book very much. It was easy to read, and folowed a smoth easy to understand steps. Unlike one other book I rade, this book simplified new concepts.

I would like to ask for the 12 digit database key to be able to install the CD and take the practic exam. Please email this information as soon as posibile.
Thank you
R.Y.

This book was truly excellent. It flows well and I read it in only two weeks. I passed the exam the first time. I tried this before with the Sybex guide but found the book too long and boring. This one was short and to the point, whats more it had all I needed to pass and taught me a lot I took back to the job.
The practice exam CD is great too. If you can memorize those questions and answers then the exam won't be much different.
This is THE book for the CCDA exam.

Just used this book and passed the CCDA. Took about three weeks to read and I did some of the Case Studies. The CD Test was real good too (they must have fixed it). I was certified in a month. Can't beat that. Buy the book and forget the courses.

I used this book to study for the Cisco Routing Exam 640-503. The material is very relevant to real world issue I deal with in our network day to day. The book is worth the money for the great sample configurations and debug info alone. It covers in more detail the practical side of doing ip routing then most of the Cisco Press titles. The authors clearly know the material and put together sample configurations and networks that you might actually do in the real world.
I would pick this book up in addition to any other study materials for the CCNP Routing exam. I personally think the routing exam was the hardest of the bunch. Now I get to study for the new 640-901 Building Scalable Cisco Internetworks (BSCI) for the CCIP, the great news is that this book has ISIS, which is on the new BSCI exam.
Ed Horley - CCNP, CCDA

Definitely, Advanced is the word here. I have read it, and I use this book a lot as Reference. Very useful, nice examples; very well explained.

If you're involved with Cisco Routers in any way, you should have this, even if youre not the network administrator, it will help you understand how routers work. I even used it as a reference for my Bachelor's Degree Project. Definitely a must-have!

One of the most sought after certifications is the CCIE. CCIE is also the hardest certification to obtain and for the most part it has to do with the Advanced IP routing exam and lab. This book should provide much needed help in that area.

Written by two CCIE's this book tackles the extremely complex subject of IP Routing in great detail. Topics dealing with standard routing are only the beginning of this book. More advanced topics like classful and classless routing, IS-IS, integrating the routing protocols together, NAT, DDR and some of the most compete and detailed coverage of BGP and but a few of the areas discussed.

Each and every section has CCIE tips included and well as router screenshots. Both author make the most of their uses of the diagrams and figures giving you on of the first book for the CCIE exam.

Was given this book as a suplment study aid for the CCNP Routing exam. The book has a lot of great information and is a great study aid. The BGP section is very lacking and you'd be better served by seaking BGP infomation elseware. Other then the BGP section I found this book very helpfull

This is an excellent book to Study Advanced Cisco Networking. This book covers Routing with practical examples. Also included is the detailed configs at each stage. This book is recommended for CCNP or CCIE Students.

This collection of 4 texts, a complete preparation guide for the four core CCNP exams is an absolute must-have to pass all 4 exams with high score. Everything you would need to pass the exams is contained here.

If you or your company has money to shell out for the CCNP certification courses (which costs somewhere around $2,000+ per course, multiply that to 4), you would have the privilege to work on the lab hands-on, plus receive 2-volume spring-bound textbooks.

But, if you cannot afford to spend that fortune or your company is such a cheap skate, bless you... this book set contains the exact contents, word-for-word, of each of the required course. Main difference is that it is more convenient than the 2-volume spring bound official text. Errata given by class instructors also apply to these books. Some certified training center might hand you a separate lab book which has a different setup than the one contained on these books. Although the actual lab setup and hardware used from Cisco CEC is different from these books, the actual lab scenarios and practices are somewhat similar with these books' content.

I have not used any other reviewer but these sets to attain my CCNP certification (I got rid of the spring-bound text given to me at certified training center, yup, sold it to ebay). I strongly advised to go through the lab scenarios/exercises, either on a piece of paper or actual hardware (don't bother with Sybex CCNP Virtual lab, it's a great disapointment). You can grab yourself some used routers/switches from ebay (some companies on the internet offer a timed lab practice for a fraction of the cost where you FTP on their site and allow you access on their hardware) or you can follow along and do the exercises on a piece of paper.

If you must pass your CCNP, you will, and these book set is all you need. I'll give it a 5-star as the errors you will find are not really major one...bv the lab exercises & exhaustive information are awesome! Superbly illustrated throughout. The Book set is not only highly useful for the exam, but would also come in super handy as a great reference tool for the job.

You'll definitely want to spend the money on purchasing this set. It contains everything you'll need to pass the CCNP. Unlike a dedicated study guide, however, this set contains books that will continue to serve you in the future as you work with Cisco switches and routers. Every successful network administrator I know has this set. The materials are written in a clear manner with plenty of diagrams by excellent technical authors. If you have only one set of books for Cisco materials, this is the set to have.

Some reviewers claimed it's a good book (in fact 4 books in a set). However, while its technical contents are accurate and in-depth, it fails to help readers to understand the topics so that people can one day pass the CCNP exam.
The wording, organization are just odd. They're hard to read, and boring. If you can only last for merely 10 min. on these books, what is the purpose of buying them ?
Those authors must be good engineers/instructors, but the editors failed big time to make these books good enough to justify the price tag.
My 2 cents, buy some other CCNP books. They're better ones.

Cisco has updated the CCNP exams with new material as well as new questions. Studying for the exam(s) requires the most up to date material available, that's why Cisco Press has taken the lead and given you a preparation library that is both complete and up to date with all the changes.

The four book set is tailored made for the classroom and is listed as Cisco Official courseware. Covering the BCMSN, BCRAN, BCSN and CIT exams this sets of books also works to help in the study for the CCDP exams.

Once thing that impressed me the most is the fact that information is so detailed and written by CCIE's and CCSI's giving you the benefit of years of experience. The books had very few errors in the grammar department. The information does exceed what the objective call for and the author(s) knowledge is evident throughout the books.

Overall this is both a great set of book for the classroom and could with the certification library you have an unbeatable combination to work with. I do not see the price being an issue but with future release there should be some simulator included

For all of the lauding these books get, I think they are extremely overrated. They are some of the driest, most poorly organized and difficult-to-read technical books I've ever trudged through. I swear by Odom's Cisco Press CCNA Guide (probably one of the best networking books I ever bought, though it's been awhile), but these were a sore disappointment, and made the road to the CCNP much more painful than it needed to be by far. You'll often get the impression that the authors were intentionally trying to make fundamentally simple concepts and learning, overly complex and obscure. It's very frustrating. I've been doing this (networking) for almost 10 years now, and have come across plenty of tough studying over the years in the neverending hamster wheel of staying technically current, but I can think of few books that were as difficult and outright painful to study as these.

These books may be comprehensive (and that is very arguable), but they are very poor, difficult reads, and in my opinion, that doesn't make them an effective investment in either time or money. Now that I've finished them, I can definitively say I was disappointed overall. They're seriously overrated.

Well I originally bought this book to help study for the CVOICE exam. I certainly used it for that and then some. It covered all of the exam topics pretty well and for me was an easy read. I passed the exam easily. What I didnt realize was that I would use it even more after the fact for a reference. Definitely worth the money for this book.

As I did not understand FXS and FXO, I bought this book. But unfortunately it does not explain very clearly all the relevant analogue and digital trunk technologies. The exercises are too simple without any practical use, most figures are copied from Cisco web site, and some sentences are copied word by word. I recommend this book to those light readers only, who just want to understand some basic concepts. In my opinion it is not very useful for network engineers. Hope the new version will change a lot.

Kevin makes very clear and concise explanation of VoIP/IPT applied to Cisco equipment, sample configurations for dial-peers, differences between call processing methods like SIP, H.323 and MGCP, bandwidth usage on different types of media and networks and how to calculate amounts of calls to be provised.

I read this book primarily to pass the CVOICE exam.

First off, this book barely provides adequate coverage of the questions that come up in the exam. I kept seeing questions and thinking, hey, this wasn't in the book!

I don't think I would have passed the exam if I had relied solely on this book. It's got too many niggling errors and some poorly explained sections that look like the author was writing them in the small hours or after a few pints.

You need to check the web site, 3rd party prep guides and course notes to be sure of success.

it's a good manual for people that wants to have a better understanding of VOIP

This book contains MPLS theory, design, configuration, and various case studies. Use it as a reference and a guide for designing, implementing, and supporting an MPLS network. Even if you are not using Cisco equipment, this book can increase your awareness and understanding of MPLS technology, as well as provide you with detailed design concepts and rules for building scalable MPLS networks.

The Author has nicely articulated the concepts.This book can be used by the beginners who is new to MPLS.Dont get misguided by the word Advanced.I used this book to learn the MPLS technology and also it helped me in passing the MPLS certification exam.

It is the only book that I have found that has case studies on differenr MPLS applications like VPNs, Traffic Engineering, QOS.
It is very helpful for people needing a quick reference on MPLS . Besides the book explains the underlying concepts very clearly and in an easy to understand way.Thanks Mr. Alwayn for the excellent book.

I must admit that I was quite perplexed by this book. MPLS is not my strongest area of study - this book did not help my advancement of knowledge. This is not a book to read from cover-to-cover, but best read as the requirements arise. I think the author was particularly biased towards 'pro-Cisco'. I did not see any mention of the performance degradations that can accompany MPLS implementations. Also, I think the book needed a 2nd grammatical editor, as the overall 'flow' of the book was nonevident.

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

Material in early chapters feel like Davie's book.English seems to be the second language of author. There are plenty of twisted sentences in this book.

Definitely Lacks originality

As a networking instructor, it would not be exaggeration if I say that I had the "privilege" of studying and teaching this fantastic book. We used it as our main routing reference when we were doing CCNP courses and after several years when I decided to get down to the nitty gritty to take the CCIE written exam, it worked perfectly again and I enjoyed its nice examples and clear writing. Perhaps the most exciting thing about this book is that, there is no hard/easy or rich/poor section, all chapters seem quite solid and contiguous.

I used only this book as a reading material for the exam and I passed on my first try. This book contains a lot of valueble material about routing and it is good as a future reference for routing.
A must for future CCNP's.

I passed my exam using this book, and nothing else beside it.

Having stated that, let me point out a few things:

1- This book covers EVERYTHING you need to know to pass the exam. No question on my exam was not covered somewhere in the book. I find it hard to judge whether the authors took it a little far with the extra material, or not, which brings me to the second point..

2- The book is loooong !! It took me over 3 months to "study" the whole thing ! I know the BSCI exam is one of the hardest exams Cisco offers, but does the book need to be this long ? The Sybex Book wasnt .. and despite that, many of my friends used it, and passed the exam.

3- The language is not very easy, or maybe the writing style wasnt very smooth. This book reminds me of "big" references that we used in college, vice short and to the point text books that sufficed with covering the Syllabus, and only that. This certainly is NOT a text book !!

4- The labs at the end of each chapter ? What labs :-)

5- To do the authors justice, I have to say that this book was worth every penny I spent on it. This may not be the best book to read if your sole concern is to pass the BSCI exam, but it certainly is THE book on routing ! If you're planning on becoming a CCIE one day, this is a must read. You will sweat a little, but it will be worthwhile. I will have to give it 4 stars, not 5, beacuse this is a Certification Self-Study, so it needs to address the length of the book as well as the easiness of the presentation. Otherwise, this is a highly recommended book for all networking professionals.

Evereyone has an opinion on a book, so I thought I would share mine. Yes, this book has a ton of information, maybe too much for the exam.

This edition is a far cry from the first one. The Lab configurations could drive you crazy. It was very hard to follow because 1 pod is 4 routers plus a frame switch and 2 Backbone routers! How many people have 7 routers????

The first edition called for 3 routers in a pod and 1 backbone router. This made preparing for configuration exercises easy.

Comparing the OSPF section from the 1st to the 2nd edition is totally different. All the information is the same but the 2nd edition makes for much harder reading.

I acutally returned the book. I was uncomfortable with the layout and organization of it. I am very disapointed with the way the authors changed it. They should have left it exactly as the 1st edition and updated it with new information. Instead they changed sections and made the Labs difficult.

I guess if you never owned the 1st edition, you would think this book is great.

I am using this Cisco Press Self-Study and Cisco Press Exam Certification Guide for BSCI exam. Generally, I find this book much helpful compared to certification guide. Most concepts are elaborately discussed with good lab examples and I have almost no problem understand all of it at first glance. (I have just begun career in networking while reading this book and I don't have in-depth knowledge of routing protocols). I like the author style of writing and I am looking forward to read another of her certification books.

Note : For those who plan to purchase this book, please read BGP route reflector and probably BGP community, both found in Appendix A before going for the exam.