Customer Reviews

CCNP BSCI Official Exam Certification Guide (4th Edition)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

As a single resource for the BSCI exam there is just not enough detail or decription of critical subjects to give you any chance of passing the exam. The chapters on BGP and Redistribution are severely lacking in any examples to give you an understanding of how they work. I also question the structure of the book especially the 'Do I Know This Already' sections before each chapter. It is likely you will be attempting your BSCI following on from doing your CCNA and it is unlikely you are going to know anything about BGP, Redistribution, IPv6, Multicasting etc... so therefore question the point of having these sections. I recommend getting the Cisco Press Study Guides v3.0 if you can get them and use this book for revision purposes only as they do contain alot of questions you can go through before you take the exam.

If you're preparing for the BSCI exam, you need this book. Personally, I like to use the online version (at Safari Books) so I can cut/paste notes.

I took this approach to the CCNA volumes and passed the test easily on the first try. However, I did not pass the BSCI on the first try.

Compared to the CCNA volumes, the self test included with this book is not very helpful. It basically reiterates the "Do you know this already?" questions at the beginning of each chapter. I only bought the text for access to the CDROM test questions, so that was a little frustrating.

Too, certain sections of the book don't cover what you need to know on the test. Specifically, IPv6, multicast and IS-IS are short on detail.

Overall, if you use this book in conjunction with lab work, you will get close to passing. However, if you're like me, it might take a second try. Cisco has some good white papers on configuring IPv6 and PIM routing -- I'd take a look at them.

I almost feel silly saying this, because it's probably about the most obvious thing you'd expect from a book about Scalable Cisco Internetworks. This book does an excellent job of preparing CCNA level Network Engineers to take the next step in their careers. It's very difficult to follow some of the subject material if you don't have either a real-life network to practice these things on, or else an exam simulator, like Boson's NetSim. Also, Routing Protocols and Multicasting aren't the most exciting subjects in the world, but the book does a good job of helping to understand them.

Currently, as of 9/25/07, this is pretty much the only book that has the updated BSCI exam information. (642-901) But, just because it's pretty much the only choice right now, doesn't by any means make it a bad one! Any CCNA buying this book would be happy with the level of knowledge that can be gained from this book!

I have the 3rd printing from July 2008. Make sure you download the latest errata from the Cisco website to catch some of the errors in the product, especially for earlier printings of the work.

This product has Ciscopress on the cover. I would expect it to be the best material for preparing to pass Cisco's official exam. I have made to chapter 5 and my frustration grows with each chapter.

The book is shoddy. The examples and questions related to route summarization are confusing and incomplete. (Fortunately, I still have my McGraw Hill/Osborne CCNA book to clarify these issues).

There are errors on figures and tables (Figure 5-1 refers to a DDP?)

The "Do I Already Know" quizzes in the book and on the CD do not have matching answers! For example, Chapter 3, quiz question 1: The answer in the book is "A reliable unicast" and on the cd the answer is "Best effort unicast" (in this case the book is correct, see page 71). I have tried updating the test engine, no update exists.

I have never experienced these types of errors with Sybex products or McGraw Hill. I won't experience them again with Ciscopress books because I doubt I would purchase another book from them.

reading this book was quite a disappointment.
1. its seems that there are a lot of editing problems. i noticed that some paragraphs appeared twice, in a way that you might suspect that, after writing the book (but before printing it), no one read if from cover to cover.
2. some subjects were lacking. the authors can explain trivial CCNA subjects in detail (again) but some critical, new subjects are explained in one line. for instance, summary is explained too much while "OSPF & NBNA" is lacking! i had to google for some time just to understand this subject. if i bought this book, why should i google for explanation?
3. the book tend to dive to the bits and bytes before giving the reader the big picture. the book explain the different OSPF LSA message types before explaining the OSPF topologies. you end up getting lost. the book makes OSPF looks so complicated while its not.

and the IS-IS chapters... what a mess...
i gave up and read a book entirely dedicated to isis[...]. it took me two hours to understand ISIS using the ISIS book while the BSCI book just got me so confused.

sorry for the bad english :)

A good supplement but not a sole resource for the exam. IGP's are covered in depth but topics like BGP, redistribution and multicast are vaguely explained without much examples. frequent errors in the answers to the quizes that are in the begining of each chapter.

in response to Constantine's review...
this book is not supposed to be your "one stop test prep resource." Cisco Exam Certification Guides in general are what you should use, if you are already familiar with the information. I wouldn't say that the self study guides are a one stop resource either. My advice would be to get both. Use the self-study guide to learn the material, if needed. Then use the exam cert guide to review and test yourself. The question and answer section at the end of each chapter will really test how well you understand the information and not whether you just know some facts. I think this should make perfect sense to anybody that has taken the CCNA exam. How many straight forward questions did you see on the CCNA? ...or did you really need to understand more than one concept to answer the questions? i'm giving this book 5 stars to try and offset Constantine's unfair rating. Rate something based on what it is supposed to be and not what you misinterpreted it to be.

Books are easier to read when I can stay awake. I have not found one personal account or anecdote or joke in this book. It's strictly the information needed making it hard to keep my eyes open. The information is very up to date and thorough. To sum it up, it reads like a dictionary.

This book was the only one I used to study for and pass the BSCI exam on the first attempt. This is one of the better Cisco books I have purchased. The level of detail seemed appropriate and matched the emphasis placed on topics in the exam itself. As this was completely a self-study effort, I was skeptical that this would be sufficient for passing the exam but it was in my case. As is most typical with Cisco exams, they choose many small details that are in the textbook but may not be information that you retain while studying. This did take me 2 1/2 months worth of studying most every day in order to feel confident enough to attempt taking the exam.

I have just finished this course with the Cisco Network Academy and have found this book very helpful in preparing for the 1st of 4 ccnp exams. It also is a good idea to get the BSCI command reference guide to go with it.