Customer Reviews

CCIE: Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert Study Guide

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The CCIE written and CCIE lab are completely different and require different skills. This book prepares you for the CCIE written, which, to be honest, is not that hard. There is no depth and no complex scenarios. Basic technology question. I thank the authors for not putting in unecessary material.

There are many books available leading to the CCIE certification but since quality of study is more important than the quantity, this book appears to be a cool breeze. I was rather being overwhelmed by the span of the syllabus and promiscously bought 9 books on CCIE, among which only this book seems to have a very focussed target and covered almost everything.

But I have found a very concise discussion on Routing protocols (RIP/IGRP/EIGRP/OSPF/IS-IS) in this book which I think is not sufficient for a CCIE aspirant. But there are many a topics those are not seen in the other books.

This book is current compared to the other CCIE titles available - Cisco seem to change the blueprint regularly. So i was pleasantly surprised to find VoIP and ATM in this title - Great!!

John Swartz - a CCIE, who owes it all to the Commodore 64! - lends a great deal of technical expertise to this title. It was good to see that Todd enlisted the skills of a CCIE.

Overall, Great book.

first, let me tell you a little bit about my background, since it would be unfair to just write a review about a book w/o telling you what kind of background i come from. I work (have worked) with cisco routers on a day to day basis for 14 months - it's all i do. i bring up frame-relay-to-atm circuits all freaking day. i have lots of troubleshooting experience with vpn's/access-list's and circuit issues (serial int's). i don't create router configs, i just deploy them. i have minimal interaction with troubleshooting routing protocols (we use ospf/eigrp/bgp, in a 2500+ node network)...now that that's out of the way, onto the review - this is a pretty good book, especially if you're not a real advanced engineer. it explains the topics well, but in a general way. ie it lacks the details of other publishers books (eg cisco press or mcgrawhill (all-in-one))... but for a novice this is probably a good thing. it's a good study guide for the written, and with the right amount of experience, could be your only study guide... but it's ONLY a study guide, do not expect to use this book as a desktop reference..use caslow's book for that. the other books i used for this include Caslow's book (2nd ed.), mcgrawhill all in one written study guide (for the REAL motivated or advanced engineer) and the CCIE exam cram (coriolis - dont get this one). i focused on this book though. i also used docs from cisco's website for BGP/ospf/eigrp. i would have given it 5 stars if it were more suited to be a desktop reference. also, one final note, i did NOT rate based on errors in this text, but be warned, there are errors in this book.

There isn't a whole lot of 'one-source' material for the CCIE written at present - but this book makes a good attempt. Like other reviewers have mentioned the book is a gentle high-level overview that is easy to read...Only when the author gets into the nitty-gritty of BGP does his writing style wane by giving a treatment of BGP found more readily in an RFC rather than explaining it in easy to understand terms (to be fair though BGP IS a complex topic - try Jeff Doyle's 'Routing IP Vol 2').

I haven't taken the exam yet (though i am a CCNP) i feel relativley confident (i also read Caslows book 'Cisco Certification' - which ALOT of people are using for the written) after reading these 2 books. That combined with a couple of white papers and some practice tests will hopefully get me through.

All in all i would definitley recommend this book - but as the story usually goes, supplement it with something else.

This book is only good for a cursory review of the topics. The book seems light in detail and has lots of errors. As a general starter read this book a couple of times and then delve into the recommend reading lists and web pages at CCO. That amount of info will help you pass the written. I just passed the CCIE written today and used this book only as my first study resource but not my only!!!. It is an easy read and only the BGP chapter seemed to have the most depth. The tests also have errors. With a little more work, depth and accuracy this book has the potential to be your all in one source for the exam. The next edition may be better as an all in one reference, so supplement your studies with other material!!! Good luck all.

Good Book if you can get past all the errors. I even found notes left, to author himself. I have never seen so many errors. I began to doubt most of the text.
Why can't someone just audit the book before publishing and catch all these errors?

Terrible.

This book appears to have gone through the publication process without any technical review. The errors were too many to count, involving diagrams that didn't match their discriptions, invalid answers to test questions, technically inaccurate information and in some cases contradictory information. For instance, the one table in the book that listed the reserved/private ip address ranges had them wrong. If I could ask for my money back for this book I would.

The one positive that I think you could take from this book would be to read it as a way of testing your knowledge. If you read through it and find all the errors you are probably ready to take the written.

I would recommend the Jeff Doyle TCP/IP routing books, the Caslow Bridges, Routers and Switches, and the Exam Cram Routing and Switching as better resources. I passed the CCIE written on the first try.

I found that most of the chapters were excellent and exceptionally well written. However, two of the chapters towards the end seemed week. The practice questions were very good and on the whole, I do recommend this book. It is an essential study aid for the CCIE writteb certification.

I was surprised by the quality of this book. I had read many book on Cisco routers while pursuing my CCNP. When I started on my CCIE I read a few books and then finally bought this one. This book was definately on track. The book is written in an easy to understand style that makes it a great learning tool.