Well organized and written. I'm counting on this book to get me a passing score. I have read other CCNA books but fell short of a passing score by just a few points. When I heard the CCNA 1.0 was no longer going to be offered, I rushed to study and take the test. Big mistake #1. I didn't think there was much of a difference between 1.0 and 2.0 so I rescheduled (since I do have industry experience with switches and plus I was so close). Big mistake #2 (totally different test, I felt "green" like a MCSE in a CCIE's world). Out of $200 I was like...BUMMER. I invested in Exam Prep to fill in what I was missing. Now that I have finished this book I feel confident that I am equipped with the real deal. I am eager to take the test, it will be a great way to bring in the New Year. The review questions and hands-on projects are great (providing you have access to equipment). The coverage in WAN Protocols is awsome which happend to be one of my weak points. I understand ISDN now. EXAM PREP is the tool to put me over the top. Buy it, read it, and welcome aboard the fantastic world of "real" networking.

I thought after finishing my MCSE last year I knew all about computer networks. This book sure opened my eyes. It's a smooth path from that curriculum to the Cisco networking world. It starts with the OSI model and moves into network structure then has a real good chapter on the different Cisco products: switches, routers, modular devices, DSL, ATM etc. Then it explains the Cisco IOS, how to program the router copy and transfer images, NVRAM, Flash etc. This was all well explained so I could move on with confidence. Next came the protocols, IP, IPX and routing protocols which I never knew existed, but learned well. The book finishes with lots of coverage on WANs particularly Frame Relay which was heavily covered on the exam. Then came access lists which were well explained and also covered on the exam. Simply put, this book had all the coverage for the exam and only having unrelated A+ and Microsoft training I was able to pass the CCNA on the first try. Word of warning though, don't take it lightly, study hard, the test is hard but the material is all in here. The CD is great to determine if your ready too.

This book has a ton of good information about Cisco devices, the IOS and the many routed and routing protocols. Most of it is covered in real detail and is not really for those (who are) new to computer networking. I'd say this is a little of the advanced course although it does start with the beginning Cisco information you do need to have some decent backround in computer networking to be able to read this and pass the exam. All the different protocols which are on the exam were covered in detail here. It covered the IOS real well, the different parts of Cisco switches and routers and troubleshooting. The chapter on Access Lists covered the exam questions real well. I felt real comfortable and passed with a 92%. Warning though: The test is not easy and if you don't understand the material in the book, you won't pass. If you know the book and do the questions and exercises you'll pass. It's all in there.

Richard Deal does a nice job covering the material required for the Switching exam (640-504). I would, however, recommend that you use at least one other source for your exam preparation, even if you have extensive experience with Cisco switching products. I used the Exam Cram along with the BCMSN (Cisco Press) book by Karen Webb and scored well on the exam.

This is the only book I read on switching and I scored 956 out of 1000 on the 640-504. I was, however, fortunate enough to have the equipment to test all of the commands in this book, which helped me remember them. If you don't have the equipment to familiarize yourself with the commands, you'd better come up with a very good memorizing mechanism. I only saw 2-3 questions on the exam not covered in this book. Another 2-3 questions went a little deeper than what the book covered, but this book gives you enough info to make a very good educated guess at the least.

This book in conjunction with the Courseware is the only thing I use to pass this test first take with 898 (needed 699). After reading the BCMSN Coursware, I sat down and used this book to focus on the material needed to pass the exam. It also helps to have real world switching experience.

I passed the CCNP Support Exam 640-506 on Feb 18 2001. I had purchased Amir Ranjbar's book 3 weeks ago,last week of Jan 2001. I also bought CORIOLIS support Exam Cram by Matthew Luallen. The following is what I did to pass the exam.

1. I read Mr. Ranjbar's book cover to cover 11 Chapters. Second time around I read the Q&A in each section and the Foundation Summary in each Chapter. ( Excellent layout ). Third time around I just paid attention to the screen print out of all commands, there are many and Mr. Ranjbar has done a great job of explaining various sections of the output. Great diagrams of the ISDN, Internal architecture of 7000 & 7500 series Routers, and troubleshooting scenarios. These are actual printouts of the commands just visualize you are looking at a screen on a PC, and you will be fine. This book is GREAT !!! on the job too, it is practical.

2. Tear out the cram sheet on the Coriolis exam cram book. it has 103 commands and brief description of each, this is imperative to know,laminate this sheet at office depot for one dollar. Keep this laminated sheet with you wherever you go, good for rush hour commute, waiting at Dentist's office etc. Keep looking at it every day, it will make sense in a week or so.

3. 3-4 days before the exam, just read the Coriolis book 13 short and easy reading fun chapters, take the exam at the end of the book, keep in mind that the actual exam is much more harder than that, fill in the blanks are great.

4. Take the exam on the test engine provided by Mr. Ranjbar's CD that comes with his book, keep taking the exam until you start getting above 90% and close to 100%. If you fllow the above directions, with discipline, dedication and hard work you can pass this exam too. Good Luck to You.

The CCNP Support Examination Certification Guide, by Amir S. Ranjbar, is an essential addition to the library of anyone aspiring to pass the 640-506 exam and complete their CCNP 2.0. Those who has studied Cisco's CIT 4.0 official courseware will immediately recognize the excellence of Ranjbar's work as a second-generation effort. Given the breadth of Cisco's troubleshooting subject areas (such as TCP/IP, IPX, VLANs, ISDN, Frame-Relay, etc.), that traditionally have been laborious to cover, this text is one of streamlined clarity and time-saving precision. The summary tables of show and debug commands are simply outstanding, while its lucid diagrams unravel complex relationships and consolidate disparate facts. Ranjbar's obvious skills, both as an engineer and an educator, combine nicely to make this easily one of best books published by Cisco Press.

If I am trying to find information about a certain company I go to that company's website. The same principal applies to certification material. I am looking to become a CCNP and Support is one exam I have to take and that's why I am going to Cisco Press for the information.

In the 475 plus page manual the Author walks you through the topics of Resources for troubleshooting and troubleshooting methods. The authors ability to simply the troubleshooting process is excellent, he is able convey his expertise in an easy to understand manner.

Also included are the areas of Cisco Troubleshooting tools and troubleshooting TCP/IP, AppleTalk and switch problems. Then you have troubleshooting techniques for ISDN, VLANs, Frame Relay and ATM.

You are given an extensive coverage of the Cisco IOS commands associated with troubleshooting process with a great explanation of why and when to use the commands. You have router screen shots, figures, diagrams, tables and end of chapter questions and answers to help in your studies.

The cd-rom included has practice questions and a practice test, which can be setup to focus on one topic or random coverage of several areas and topics. Overall this book would make a great classroom guide and is well worth the price.

The Routing 2.0 exam is 40% OSPF, 30% BGP, 20 % EIGRP and 10% general internetworking questions. This book has it all. It is easy to understand with excellent diagrams and config examples. It's the only book I needed to pass the exam. It's even a good reference book to have on the job for all those commands you can't remember 6 months after taking the test! Yes, Jeff Doyles book is fantastic, but if your main objective is to obtain your CCNP, then get this book.

This book is the only book that you need to pass your Routing exam. The information in the book is very well layed out and covered in enough detail to explain the concepts to you, but not overbore you to sleep.

If you read this book cover to cover twice (I did), then you will be more than well prepared to pass the exam. It helped me pass the exam with a score of 936.

It's well worth your money and a lot better than buying a "cram" or braindump, because after reading this book, everything will become crystal clear to you. Besides - everything you learn towards attaining your CCNP will be applied to studying for your CCIE. Don't cheat your way out with imitation books or exam crams. The test is totally based on this book and if it only takes knowing 70% of the material to pass, then this book will provide you with 120% of what you need to know.

This book is all that you need for the new Routing 2.0 exam. Get this book with a couple of routers and you're all set. Used this book with a pod of 6 routers and blasted the exam on the first attempt. The book has excellent labs at the end of every chapter so you get real hand on experience configuring EIGRP,OSPF,BGP, and a real profound understanding of all these routing protocols. Get this book if you really want to know the stuff and pass the exam also. Real great desktop resource for references. Let this book be your hunny for the next month and you can not fail the exam. Good book Catherine!! Really deserves 5 stars!!

It was my main book to prepare the exam. It is well focused on exam. It includes some fast and good therorical parts. During the exam you need to be fast. You get speed with confidence in your knwoledge and practice. The book help you very much in that sense because it gives you a method with the main steps, the traps you'll face and the main show and debug command.
It offers nice and sophisticated exercises and labs. A very good way to check your level and practice "translation" of an instruction into a configuration.
Does not include QOS, IPX, BGP but on those we already have the CD and good books. For those not familiar with Cisco Voice and ATM, it gives exactly what we need for the exam. With or without it, it requires work and practice.
With some luck, I passed on the first time.

This is the best lab exam preparation book ever! The book assumes that you possess a strong knowledge of network protocols and understand a great deal about routing and switching, so it's not necesssarily the first book you should read. But it should definitely be the last book you read before taking the lab exam. If you do- not just read, but actually do the practice tests at the end of the book you will be very well prepared for the Cisco exam. I hope volume II comes out soon!

I have used several ccie lab preps and books but have never come across anything as good as this one. I just wish it had come out a few months earlier, so I would have more time to pratice the labs. The book is jam packed with numerious exercises and several ccie day-one-type labs at the end of the book for practicing the real lab. There are diagrams for every exercise and scenario. This book certainly makses Caslow's obsolite and threatens the the businesses that have sprang up selling ccie labs. The down side of the book is, this is vol 1 and doesn't have IPX, BGP, IS-IS, IPSec, and Multicast which the author says will be in vol 2. Also the solutions for the labs at the end of the book can be downloaded from a Cisco site. I think this should have been on a CD and included with the book. I can't even find the solutions on Cisco site; it is probably not postered yet. The price is steep, but compared to what is out there, it is worth every penny.

This is the newest stuff from cisco to prepare for the CCNA test. It covers the new exam, #640-507 not the old one. The books included are very well written and are great for studying or just for reference. The set is pricy but it's cheaper than if you were to buy each book seperatly. Plus you can always look back on them unlike a instructor-led course. Overall a great set of books.

Preparing for the CCNA exam 640-507 is very tough and you need all the help you can get, that's why when the CCNA Prep Library was released I had to make sure that I took a look at what Cisco was giving to everyone to study from.

The three-book set is one of the best prep libraries on the market today. The first book ICND is filled with coverage of topics like cabling, TCP/IP, IP Routing, 1900 switch, VLANS, access lists, IPX and other routing protocols. Excellent breakdown and details covering the topics. Book 2 - CCNA Certification Guide, cover the IOS, OSI Model in detail, bridging and switching, all routing protocols like RIP and OSPF, and a more detailed breakdown of access lists. Book 1 and 2 cover every exam objective is a format that takes some of the complexity of out the subject matter.

In book 3 - Internetworking Technologies Handbook 2nd edition, you are given more help in the CCNA by starting at the beginning and breaking down the networking basics. It will also help in the CCNP arena with its extensive coverage of routing protocols like BGP, EIRGP, SNA, IGRP, NLSP, OSPF and RIP.

Filled with router screen shots to give you that visual aide in studying along with cd-roms with practice questions and tests you have the definitive set of study material. Overall this is an excellent value and well worth the purchase.

This boxed set of references and study guides all complement each other. The Internetworking Technologies Handbook is an excellent reference guide, one that I personally would not want to read cover to cover, but would love to use it for a reference during studies or in real life situations. The ICND (Interconnecting Cisco Networking Devices) book is great for a "1st step," as it goes over things in great detail, and provides a good foundation to build your knowledge from. Then the CCNA study guide... well, this book is actually written by a CCIE, which already says something about it. It is not an easy book to read, but if you take your time, study what you need to study, and do your homework, this book is a great one. You will know the information you need to know to pass the exam, and then some.

I went looking for material for CCDA and stumbled across this book. What I found was 400 plus pages of information making the passing of the CCDA exam easier and the learning were enjoyable.

Covering the 640-441 exam the book is broken down into 6 parts covering 11 chapters. Starting off with the OSI model and then on to design concepts and models. You then move right into identifying the customers needs and quickly follow up with hardware for LANS and WANS.

There is excellent coverage of addressing along with protocols, management and testing and a very good coverage of the IOS. The author includes 5 case studies to further help you understand the concepts of the book.

The book comes with a cd-rom with over 200 questions and the install was a snap. The book and cd are setup for a classroom situation and the software can be taken as a straight forward exam or in the adaptive mode.

You can track your results as well as a history of your success. Overall the material is excellent and the money I spent was well worth it.

The book was real well written and covered a lot of different topics. I did notice it was not real in depth in some areas such as Cicso IOS commands but I didn't find any of these on the test either. It's not a complete book of Cisco networking but it covered all I found on the exam. What I liked most though is it moved well and was easy to read. The author covered the material without a lot of unnecessary technical detail. I liked it and I passed so I have to say I accomplished what I bought it for.

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.

...in a self-study regimen that costs a few hundred instead of thousands. I recommend this book as the first stage in self-study.

Go through this book chapter by chapter, one pass just reading and looking at the figures and diagrams, the next pass taking notes. There are only 10 or 15 review questions at the end of each chapter and no companion CD with test questions so just learn the material before moving on. The writing and layout makes that easy though, as this book is very clearly written and makes heavy use of figures and examples throughout to reinforce the concepts in each chapter.

Don't take the test yet though. After this nice introduction do the same thing with the Sybex/Todd Lammle CCNA Study Guide. Read it, then go back and really read it and take notes. You will find much-needed additional coverage of subnetting and CLI commands here, as well as an excellent sample test engine. Review your notes and really work this test engine before taking the real test.

Finally, the Cisco CCNA Study Guide by Wendal Odom is worth running through at least once just to work your way to the extensive sample questions and CD, but by now you should be more than ready for the test anyway so you could use it as a lookup resource alone if your eyes glaze over on some chapters.

Of course, get all the hands on experience you can. Touch it and feel it as much as possible. I have a friend who says he never really understood access lists until he held a router in his hands, but if you want to pass this test, just absorb a large percentage of what is in these three books and when you can pass the sample tests on the CDs consistently, go take the real test and pass.

The CCNA 2.0 test is hard but it wasn't all that tricky to me; it just covers a lot of ground. The ICND book goes over that ground quite well as a starting point to earning your CCNA certification. Even though I complained to myself about it costing too much compared to the other guides on the market, overall it is well worth the investment if you are just getting started and want to pass.

CCNA 2.0 training classes can cost thousands of dollars, but if you just invest a few hundred on books and some serious study time you can pass this test. You know you can, do it.

I read this book twice in a month. I passed the exam first time with a score of 968/1000. It was harder than I expected but this book prepared me well. Cisco Press books aren't the easiest books in the world to read, however in my opinion they are the most comprehensive. I would recommend this book to anyone studying for the CCNA exam. If you're prepared to put in the effort, this book will reward you. Apparently, it's a direct port of the ICND 5 day training course. I've just finished my first read of BSCN from Cisco Press which is equally good.

This book is really great reading material and an excellent source of info for passing the exam. I passed my exam the first time I took it with the help of this book and Todd Lammle's.

The layout and the order of how the information was presented was very helpful in bringing me up to speed with Cisco technology. A++

I bought Robert Myhre's CCNA Certification book and a Cisco 2501 Router on February 1, 2000. Prior to that date I had no working knowledge of Cisco routers and very little knowledge of networking in gereral. Today, February 5, 2000 I passed the Cisco CCNA test with an 804. The only study guide I used was this book and a router. This book covers every CCNA exam objective. It has excellent labs with practice questions at the end of each chapter. The author has done an exceptional job.

I bought several books on Cisco and CCNA before taking and passing the exam with a score in the high 790's. With hindsight, I can say that Mr. Myhre's guide was by far the most instrumental in my success because it set the foundation necessary to make other manuals more readable.

There are many factors that make this guide essential to anyone preparing for the exam, but for the sake of time and space here are just a few: --All of the exam objectives are thoroughly covered. --I began my studies with only a superficial knowledge of the subject matter, and found the material highly readable and very well thought out. Very rare for a technical manual.

I had no problem finding the page numbers, the reviewers who did should eat more carrots. This book is ESSENTIAL to your success.

If you have the time and energy to study this book, you'll be more than able to pass the CCNA exam. The book is well written, easy to read, and deals with technical data in an approachable manner. The author claims to be a classroom instructor, and it shows! Topics that can be incredibly difficult like VLSM are made simple with this book. This book gives you enough to pass the exam, while giving you plenty of real-world knowledge you can apply on the job.

There are one or two practice questions that have incorrect answers. The introduction says the last chapter covers material that won't be on the exam, but that statement is incorrect. Otherwise, this book is reliable and relatively error-free.