Customer Reviews

CCDA(R) Exam Certification Guide (CCDA Self-Study, 640-861) (2nd Edition)

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I was very impressed with the layout and content of this book. I was even more impressed with the lack of typos (except for a couple), normally found in so many Cisco Certification books.

I have read the Sybex "CCDA" book and the Cisco Press "Designing Cisco Networks" book cover to cover. This new CCDA book is straight to the point, clear and concise. I highly recommend it for CCDA exam preparation. The exam objectives are listed in each chapter, and the material follows the format nicely.

I can only hope that Cisco Press continues to put out books like this...clear and to the point!

Having recently taken the CCDA exam I was interested in seeing how the CCDA Self-Study Exam Certification Guide would have helped me in my preparations. What I found is that authors Bruno and Kim do a good job in covering most if not all the exam objectives. However, they lack in providing the depth of knowledge needed to adequately prepare an individual for the exam.

Typical of most Cisco Press self-study exam prep guides each chapter starts off with a "Do I Know This Already?" quiz. These do a wonderful job in providing the reader a quick way to gauge what they know in that particular area.

The chapters then proceed to the Foundation Topics, a Foundation Summary, and finally a Q&A section. I found that the majority of chapters do an adequate job in presenting the information you will need to not be totally lost on the exam.

Ok, now the crux of my evaluation. I don't believe I could use this book solely to study and pass the CCDA exam. The book provides an excellent introduction to all of the topics covered on the exam but just does not do so in as much depth as the exam requires.

One particular area is the area of network design and also network design methodology (chapters 1 and 2). The authors spend about 30 pages of text describing what about a third of the exams consist. Let me be honest here, those areas were ones that I struggled with, particularly discerning between a technical/business goal/restraint, so maybe I am jaded.

To be balanced, the material covering IPv6 was excellent in its minimalist approach. It was much easier to read than the 30 or so page whitepaper, "The ABC's of IPv6". Also the section on the Enterprise Composite Network model was concise and the diagrams were wonderful.

In general I think this book would be great to read as both an introduction to the material and also as a review the weekend before the exam. The case study in the last chapter gives you plenty of review material and a way to model what you might find in the real world. The CD containing the entire book in PDF format and 200 practice questions would also be helpfully in reviewing/preparing for the exam. The diagrams and illustrations are clear and help in digesting the material.

For my money, I don't think you can buy enough material to prepare for the CCDA exam. I am a CCNA, a CCDP, and a Cisco Voice specialist and found the CCDA exam to be one of the harder exams that I have taken from Cisco (Biochemistry has them all beat). This guide won't solely get you through the exam it will certainly help get you started and/or help you review.

I would also suggest Diane Teare's Cisco Press book CCDA Self-Study, Designing for Cisco Internetwork Solutions (ISBN 1587051419) and Priscilla Oppenheimer's Top-Down Network Design (ISBN 1578700698) as books to also use in studying for the CCDA exam. They provide a much more in-depth coverage of most of the material.

This book is concise & well written, although you may want to read another book first (i.e. Todd Lammle's CCDA book) to get the in depth exposure, and then use this one to fine tune what you learned.

The CD was a great overview, although I didn't see many of the CD questions on the actual test. But then, that's not the way Cisco operates...use this book to learn the material, "apply" what you've learned on the test, and you'll do just fine.

And, yes...I did pass the test on my first try!

I passed exam using only this book but ...

This book is pretty well written design tutorial but it's not very good for exam preparation. I was really amazed how different is real exam from examples in the book. Real test had many questions on case studies instead of general questions like in examples on CD. I also had a few questions on ATM which were not covered at all.

Of course, this book is not bad and it's possible to pass exam, especially if you plan to use several tutorials. But if you want to buy only one book you prabably should consider some other choices.

This is all you need to get your CCDA! I just passed the DCN exam quite easily with flying color by refering to this book only.

The book has lots of case studies questions on all chapters, besides good and brief explanations on the Cisco internetworking technology material. It even dedicates the last chapter for several extra case studies. All I can say is that they are more than enough to prepare you answering case study questions on the exam day.

The CD has an electronic version of the book and more than 200 practice exams questions. Take and pass the practice exam several times and you are on your way to the CCDA!

WARNING:

- When you sit for the exam, make sure you read the case study questions VERY CAREFULLY and understand them before answering.

- Keep in mind that DCN exam IS NOT for a novice. You'd better have a good understanding of basic internetworking stuff, know Cisco products quite well, and have real-world experiences. This is not an ordinary 'paper exam', but it challenges your capability to implement internetworking on real-world scenarios. For the first two, make sure you read all the chapters and the Appendixes. It is also a good idea to visit the Cisco web site and read all related materials. For the experience thing, nothing is better than 'tasting the honey by yourself'.

(CCNA, CCDA, Network+, MCSE+I, MCDBA)

In the past year I have taken the CCDA beta and the CCDA live exams. I took the exams to see what changes have been made to one of Cisco toughest exams out there today. What I found out was that the exam is still very tough and they have added a great more material.

In this book every exam objective is tackled and each objective is handled with great technical detail. The author has proven to be one of the best resources for the CCDA exam around today. One of the topics I had trouble with on the exam was IPv6, I certainly could have used this book as reference. The book has about 30 pages and the information is great, I hope in future editions they expand this section.

Also the SAFE blueprint and Convergence Technologies are handled very well and the latter section cleared up several questions that I have had for a while. One of the things I liked the best about this book is the pre and post review questions, giving you a chance to find out what you know before you start.

The cd-rom has about 200 practice question and I think for the price you should get a few more and a few case studies as well, and this can also be addressed in updated editions. Overall, I think this book should do fairly good job of preparing you for the exam. While the book claims to be a self study guide, you should have some practical hands-on experience before tackling this certification.

I read both DCN and this book to pass the CCDA exam. Both were good books for my exam preparation and education. Are you going to find the exact questions on the DCN exam in this book? No, but if that is what you are looking for then perhaps you should ask yourself why you are reading the book to begin with. Read the material in the book, understand it, then apply what you learned in the exam.

I would have given this book 5 stars if it hadn't been for weak coverage of ATM, X.25, VTP, and some minor errors (ISDN) on the practice CD.

Overall, I felt it was an excellent book and the CD was a nice surprise (even with a few errors).

I own many Cisco Press titles (about 20), and I am pleased with all of them. They are the most readable, thorough titles on the market when it comes to exam preparation. I waited several months for this book to be published so that I could pursue my CCDA certification, and I ordered it the day it started shipping. Over the next four weeks, I put in about 4 hours per day, on average, reading this book and using the materials on the CD that's bundled with it. Using this book as my primary study guide, I passed the exam on the first try.

From a content and presentation standpoint, this book is one of the best self-teaching tools I've ever used, period. In terms of the book's content and how it corresponds to Cisco's published objectives for the CCDA exam, this book covers them all in great detail. In fact, as I found on the exam, if you have mastered the material in this book you will find most aspects of the CCDA exam almost trivial. Except for the fact that you have 75 minutes to complete 72 questions--so know your material cold. Good preparation is a must. I found two things that really helped me with this: (1) the "Do I Know This Already" and Q&A quizzes included with every chapter, (2) the CD's practice exam engine. The Q&A and "Do I Know This Already" materials are a bit misleading in one sense, however. The Q&A questions at the end of each chapter are considerably more difficult than the "Do I Know This Already" questions. If you want to gauge your knowledge of a topic before deciding to skip that chapter, you should probably go straight to the Q&A questions rather than making an assessment based on the "Do I Know This Already" quizzes.

This book gives outstanding introductions to routing protocols, including RIPv2, EIGRP, OSPF, IS-IS and BGP, devoting several chapters to them. (It also covers CCNA topics such as RIP and IGRP for completeness.) Although the coverage of advanced routing protocols benefited me greatly in pursuit of my CCNP certification, there's almost no coverage of any of them on the CCDA exam. The same is true of a few other topics in the book, including (sadly) VoIP.

That said, however, this new CCDA Exam Certification Guide is also a very good preparatory tool for the 642-871 ARCH exam. Without studying anything specific to that exam, I only missed this exam (and my CCDP) by 20 points after passing the CCDA and the CCNP routing and switching exams.

This book comes with a CD that contains a great practice exam engine (Cisco Press is obviously licensing the Boson exam engine with this book and its newest CCNP Exam Cert Guide books). I found it very useful also, although frankly I'm annoyed that I had to register the software via the Internet before I could use it. I mean, I paid for the book . . . let me use the software!

In the course of using this book to prepare for the exam, I found a number of errors in the book. The majority are typographical, but some (nine, to be exact) are technical content blunders that need to be fixed in the next printing. Of the errors I found, only a few percent are technical errors, so the remaining 90%+ shouldn't trip up too many readers. I've sent my list of corrections to Cisco Press to help them make the book better.

Overall I give this book four stars. The next printing, if it fixes the errors, will get a solid five stars from me.

Ah.. The overpriced Cisco Press books. Actually, I think this one might be required to pass the CCDA exam. The test is easy enough, but reviewing and following the case studies at the end of the chapters will help prepare you for the test. In order to prepare for the CCDA I used the Sybex Exam Notes, and reviewed the case studies in this book. With four days of study that was more than enough to prepare for this test. I really have complains with this book, but for your knowledge the actual Cisco test questions are very poorly written. Be sure to read them twice before answering because several times it was difficult to figure out what they were trying to get at. Remember, review of the case studies in this book is probably the single most important thing you need to do in order to prepare for your CCDA, I never even looked at the rest of the book, and since I passed the test on my first try, I never will.

If you are interested in getting a very very sketchy 'top' level view (and sometimes an incomplete one at that !) of the design practise of Cisco as outlined in their CCDA course objectives, then this book might "just about" meet the specifications.

However, if you need to prepare yourself for the CCDA exam well enough to handle the scenarios and the questions, then this book falls way way way short. I am not sure how the folks at Cisco Press could even clear this publications and state that this qualifies as study material for the course ...its THAT insufficent if you know what I mean.

If you are going for the exam based on prepartion with this book, you might want to postpone your test date and look at other authors.

I would definately NOT recommend this book towards exam prepartion.