Customer Reviews

CCDA/CCDP Flash Cards and Exam Practice Pack (Flash Cards and Exam Practice Packs)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

CCDA/CCDP Flash Cards and Exam Practice Pack by Anthony Sequeira and Kevin Wallace (Cisco Press 2004) delivers on what it promises: solid final preparation materials for the CCDA (DESIGN 640-861) and CCDP (ARCH 642-871) exams. If you have studied the basic exam material for these exams you are ready to burn in your knowledge using this book. For the CCDA, preliminary preparations means reading the CCDA Exam Certification Guide and/or the CCDA Self Study book for the DESIGN topics. Both of these are now available from Cisco Press. Unfortunately, there are no corresponding books for the ARCH topics, so you need to take a more creative course, such as perusing the SRND guides on Cisco's website for topics such as storage, wireless, VPN, content, and telephony, while keeping the exam objectives (listed on Cisco's website) in the back of your mind. Overall, I would rate this book a 5 (out of 5), with the strong caveat that it will be difficult to pass the exams unless you do a significant amount of outside research, especially in the case of CCDP ARCH.

In making the design track more relevant to the current networking scene, Cisco replaced (in 2003) the old CCDA course with one that focused much more on cogent design practices, such as identifying the technical and business goals and constraints put forth in Priscilla Oppenheimer's Top Down Network Design. They also dropped old technologies like IPX and AppleTalk and replaced these rarely used protocols with forward-looking material like IP telephony, modern security issues like IP spoofing and DDoS mitigation, and the enterprise composite network model, which further breaks down the familiar access, distribution, and core layers into an enterprise campus (which includes submodules for network management and the server), an enterprise edge (with separate internet connectivity and e-commerce modules, along with a remote access and WAN module), and a service provider edge.

Similarly, the CCDP ARCH course was upgraded (also in 2003), with a deeper focus on all of the above areas, and a much deeper treatment of QoS options for voice and data, specifics on multicast features such as sparse and dense mode operations and shared versus source distribution trees, details on the CiscoWorks network management tools including LAN Management Services and Routed WAN Management System, content caching, routing and switching, and storage essentials including NAS and SAN. In most cases the ARCH course drills deeper than the DESIGN course; in some, such as IP telephony, the DESIGN course seems to deal with the lower level issues (such as tip and ring) while ARCH deals with applications (such as Call Manager configurations including single-site, multisite, and clustering over the WAN).

The examples in CCDA/CCDP Flash Cards and Exam Practice Pack are very easy to understand and the flash cards follow the quick reference sheets quite faithfully. The illustrations are excellent and the practice questions (available on the accompanying CD-ROM) are highly relevant. The authors have delivered exactly what should be expected for this type of book; they are both certified Cisco Systems instructors with KnowledgeNet and clearly know their stuff.

By the time you're acing all the topics in the flash card book (when preparing for CCDP, I went back over CCDA), you're ready to make an educated guess on anything that isn't obvious. There were still a few surprises in the exam but this book definitely helped me muddle through. I would assume the CCDP ARCH will be an easier nut to crack when Cisco Press releases an exam certification guide, currently slated for November 2004.

CCDA/CCDP Flash Cards and Exam Practice Pack won't teach you the concepts of network design, so it can't be compared to and won't replace a study guide. The only purpose of this book is to help you in finding weak areas and providing a summarization of all exam topics to aid you in your study.

I used it to prepare for the CCDA exam after reading the CCDA Self-Study Guide and Top-Down Network Design book. It served as a great preparation tool, especially the quick reference sheets which provided comprehensive information on all relevant topics. A little buggy but useful nonetheless were the Flash cards, they helped to memorize small but important facts which proved very useful during the exam. Without this book it would have been much harder to pass.

I'm really looking forward to use it throughout my CCDP study!

Having just passed the CCDA DESIGN exam 640-861 and CCDP ARCH exam 642-871 within the period of one week, I found this book to be one of the more useful study tools. The ARCH exam is really an extension of the DESIGH exam...in fact the two tests share some of the same knowledge, so it's best to take them consecutively to cut down on your study time. The Flash Cards in this book relate directly to the Quick Reference Sheets and these Sheets are probably the most outstanding feature of this book. They do a great job of summarizing most of what you need to know to pass this exam. The study questions were great, too, at filling in small details that you will see on the exam. I want to stress that this was not the only study tool I used, but this book was outstanding for final test preparation. Highly recommended.

As a CCSI that teaches the DESGN course for the CCDA, I highly recommend this resource. It definitely gives students an edge going into the exam. It is very Exam-centric.

This book provides a very good study aid before you take your CCDA exam...I was a little confused at one of the above reviews stating "Use these and fail your CCDA exam" until I clicked on all the reviews sent by that reader - it seems he/she has a history of failing the exams and blaming the book. As I said, this book provides a great study AID, it's not meant to be your ONLY study resource for the CCDA exam!

If Suresh had bothered to read the notes on the back of the book he would have found that "officially" they were recommended as "part" of the recommended learning path. The mere fact that another reader found them all he needed says more about the state of preparedness of the other reviewer than the quality of the book. So ignoring Suresh then there is actually nothing wrong with this offering from Cisco Press who on the whole don't do too bad a job. You do need at least the DESGN text book and also I would suggest the Certification Guide as well as this is no push over of an exam. But dear me don't do this volume in because it presents only part of the suggested jigsaw. Five stars and read properly what you are reviewing before you slate it!

Looking for some information on prep materials for the CCDP, and anyone looking at this material has to realize ahead of time that the test has been updated since this material was first made available.
The most recent exam is the CCDP (ARCH) 642-873 and this set may (or may not) be able to prepare you for the new exam. The old exam is retired,so I'm a bit surprised this is still for sale.

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The CCDA flash card book is good and does a decent job of practicing core concepts for the CCDA exam. Do not use this book as your sole source of preparation for the CCDA exam.

All in all I found this to be a good supplement to my other CCDA study material. It particularly was useful to skim though the cards prior to reading that topic (from another source) and then really quizzing yourself after finishing the chapter.

The quiz engine had a few mistakes but overall I found it quite useful.

However, when I installed the flash cards on my Sony Clie TH-55 it caused a fatal memory error that required a hard reset! It was a painful loss of data! After sending my clie back to Sony, they certified it OK, and when I tried to install the cards (a 2nd and 3rd time) it crashed again! Acckk!! I'm sure this is not common but back up your PDA before installing it!!!

I rate it 3 stars only because I bought it so I could study on the train with my PDA, and sadly cannot do so. (would be a 4 otherwise)

I completed my CCDA yesterday and this book was all I needed. I am now on to my CCDP.

Use the Study Sheets in this book first - they cover everything you need to know - after going through those (they tear out so you can carry them around) - go through the flash cards and the exam questions on the CD-ROM.

For the CCDP - I am going to try loading the flash cards on my PDA! This is suppossedly included on the CD-ROM. You cannot beat this practice kit for these exams!