Customer Reviews

CCNP BSCI Exam Certification Guide (CCNP Self-Study, 642-801) (3rd Edition)

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

 

 

This book is another example of a Cisco Press book that was written in a hurry by a group of people that did not communicate nor did they carefully review their material for errors. Some of the router configuration examples are clearly wrong. The attached CD at times does not reflect the written mateial and asks questions that are not covered in the book! As of May 1, 2003, Cisco has announced that the BSCI 640-901 test (This Book!) is being replaced by a new test - BSCI 642-901. Hopefully the author(s) will correct all of their errors in the next edition for the new test. Good luck on you CCNP/DP Certification

This book does cover the material however, it is organized somewhat funny, a little difficult to follow and the IPv6 section is very weak. If you are new to these subjects this book is not for you. It is easier if you have years of hands on experience or have read other books first. I used it as a complement with the Doyle and new Cisco Press CCIE book plus my own lab to pass the BSCI in a couple of weeks. The CD test engine is too easy. One tip to pass the BCSI, practice, practice, practice.

This book is dated though(2003)compared to BCMSN switching exam which released a new book in early 06 that is excellent.

I used Clair's first book back in 2k and it was great but this one is so so. HTH...

This books acknowledgements describes the technical editors work as "quite brilliant", one offered "amazing attention to detail", another utilized "eagle eyes". But this product is plagued by the same type of errors that have become typical of certification books. However, my expectations have always remained high. Amazingly, one glaring mistake ( misinformation ) in Gough's 2001 issue of this book was not completely corrected in this new book. The error concerns the OSPF summary-address command ( pg300-301) and you will only be confused by this books explanation.

In this books Warning and Disclaimers it states "Every effort has been made to make this book......as accurate as possible." Who believes that crap? What it should say is "In the rush to meet the publishing deadline and with the limited resources available inaccuracies should be expected."

Another annoyance, the CD pdf does not allow you to print or cut and paste from the pdf version of the book. Gough's 2001 version of this book allowed this, although legally ( wink wink ) permission was necessary. There is no reason not to give the purchaser the capability to print segments of the book. Obviously they have an overblown sense of the value of the contents of this book.

I agree with Las Cruces's review. I am only posting because I disagree with his rating of 4 out of 5. I bought the book to help me learn the latest things for my recertification, not to learn how to decode extremely good, but poorly presented material. To be fair, I haven't read the whole book and am now seriously questioning if I will.

The CCNP BSCI Exam Certification Guide was a long read. But as far as the material contained within, the ends were worth every minute. Ms. Gough does not skip corners or spare the important details. Nor, does she put in a lot of the fluff or redundant wording. The chapter writings are instructional without being repetitive. And, the Practice Questions and Scenarios are right on target as both real-world examples and real-exam questions. The flow of the chapters is meant to build the reader up to handle the deep thought nature of the BSCI Exam and the ever changing nature of current internetworking. Ms. Cough compartmentalizes important topics to highlight it's importance without isolating the reader from the real network impact each topic can have on both simple and complex Internetworks. One slight negative, the final edit of this tome seemed jumpy at times and occasionally wordy. But, the overall content and presentation were exceptional.

This book is stuffed with of everything a person needs to move into the advanced concepts of routing and networking. Troubleshooting flowcharts, practice questions, make-them-think scenarios, Real World Examples, detailed and concise explanations of concepts, theory and practice, etc... It's all here and more. The CD contains a database of 350+ questions for the test practice engine to pull from. And, since many of these questions were directly from the text, the text provides good explanations to clear up any misunderstandings or misinterpretations.

I would recommend this Cisco ECG to all experienced networkers with or without a Cisco background. For those looking to complete their Cisco Routing Reference Library, the Cisco Press BSCI ECG offers a great value. No three other publicly published books will give you the amount of reference materials and examples you'll find in this one volume. For anyone prepping for the BSCI Exam, you'll be very hard pressed to beat this. The CD alone will be of great value to prepare individuals looking to hone their test taking readiness.

If you are planning to take the BSCI Certification Exam and have a good introductory foundation of internetworking theory, practices and principles, then this book will take you where you need to be. I will say that this book is NOT meant for the beginner or even a lower-level novice to Internetworking, but then again neither is the Cisco BSCI test. This book more than meets it's intended purpose: Prepare the intermediate user for the BSCI Certification Exam AND the real world tests that will follow such a certification. But, this book can be used for so much more long after the test has been passed.

The "CCNP BSCI Exam Certification Guide, Third Edition" (ISBN 1-58720-085-6; Clare Gough; Cisco Press; 931 pages) is the official study guide for the "Building Cisco Scalable Internetworks" exam (BSCI 642-801). The Forward states that the guide is "a complete study tool" for the CCNP BSCI exam. The book is organized into major sections covering IP routing fundamentals, OSPF, IS-IS, EIGRP, BGP and redistribution and policy-based routing, closely following the exam topics outlined at www.cisco.com/certifcations. Many chapters include scenario exercises and the final chapter is devoted to a dozen scenarios to help you prepare for the exam. Numerous tables, figures and examples are included to illustrate concepts. A handy glossary is also included at the back of the book.

The book provides several suggested study strategies and useful tips for taking the real exam. "Do I Know This Already?" questions at the start of each chapter allow readers with different levels of experience to focus on the specific areas they need to improve.

At the end of each chapter is a "Foundation Summary" that reinforces important concepts and which can be used for review a day or two prior to taking the real exam. Also following each chapter is a "Q&A" section with questions that are more difficult than the ones on the real exam. These questions probe your understanding of a topic and don't depend on the multiple-choice format that encourages guessing at answers. All questions and answers are grouped into an appendix that makes another good review tool to use before the real exam.

Although the book seems to contain all the right ingredients and the author obviously is knowledgeable, it does make for some difficult reading. There are several reasons for this. Many times I found myself rereading unclear sentences or portions of text. At other times abrupt change in topics from one paragraph to the next often led me to wonder if a paragraph had been inadvertently misplaced. And the dry writing style can leave one looking with anticipation to see how many pages remain in a chapter.

The general approach used to introduce each major topic is to first provide a lengthy table of all the relevant terminology. Most of these terms may not be referred to again for many pages, at which time only an acronym appears. I found myself flipping back and forth repeatedly while reading. A better approach would be to introduce terminology closer to the time it is actually used and explained.

Some of the provided figures seem contrived, as though they were created as an afterthought. In a typical example, only a brief statement mentioning the need to send high-priority traffic over a dedicated path accompanies a half-page figure consisting of two autonomous system clouds and six routers.

One omission becomes evident when using this guide to prepare for the BCSI exam: although router configuration for NAT is clearly identified as an exam topic both at www.cisco.com and in the Introduction section of the book this topic is inexplicably omitted from the text. You'll find only a brief introduction to NAT and not a single NAT configuration statement.

The companion CD-ROM contains practice questions and the full text of the book in Adobe Acrobat format. A total of 355 test questions are available including 255 questions taken directly from the text and 20 lab simulations. The practice tests contain multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank and list-in-order style questions.

The lab simulations, although useful, are fairly simple, typically requiring basic configuration of a routing protocol. More advanced features like creation of route maps aren't covered. And 15 of the 20 simulations are exactly the same as those found on the Cisco Press CCNP Flash Cards Exam Preparation CD-ROM. It's disappointing to find parts of one product you've purchased simply repackaged and sold as another. I, for one, expect better from Cisco Press.

Though it's based on a recent version of the Boson test engine the test simulator does contain a few annoying quirks. For example, rather than displaying an explanation when you select an incorrect answer you are instead referred to a page number in the PDF - but these page numbers don't correspond to the ones in the printed text. There's a button on the question window to display the relevant PDF section but the button oddly isn't available when you get an answer wrong. And the flash-card style screen saver mode only works correctly on multiple-choice questions. Thankfully, as with other titles in the CCNP Exam Certification series, nothing prevents one from using the CD-ROM on more than one computer.

So would I buy another book from this author? Well, yes, simply because she is knowledgeable about the topics. But as is the case with other Cisco Press publications a more diligent editing process could help a lot to improve the overall product quality. Overall the guide represents a decent value. On a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the highest rating, this guide rates a 3.

I've just finished taking a class on this subject and bought this book as a way to supplement my knowledge in preparation for the BSCI exam. I've now gone 65 pages into the book and I am amazed by the depth of knowledge this book brings. Whereas in the class, we may have used VLSM to come up with some very simple VLSM addressing schemes, this book shows you how to implement a five-level VLSM scheme - Region, Campus, Building, Floor and Host. Everything is written very clearly and I am recommending this book to my friends.

Studying this book finally enabled me to pass the BSCI. Make no mistake though; this is not a great book. It is poorly organized, it is full of errors (even ones not stated in the errata - I can rattle off quite a few) and basically hard to understand.

If you are new to the subject, this is not the book you want to read - go buy the Sybex book. If you have read and understand the Sybex book, and want to pass the exam, read this book. I can not tell you what is on the exam (or Cisco will sue me) but I CAN tell you from experience that there is information on the exam concerning material that is covered in this book and NOT in the Sybex book!!

As for those who claim the Sybex book has a better grasp on the concepts, I disagree. Claire Gogh's writing on BGP is hard to wade through, but it is rather obvious that she understands BGP better than the author of the Sybex book.

BSCI 642-801 is a tough exam and the combination of topics makes it tough to remember everything. This newer Clare Gough book is worse, please do not buy it, get a copy of the CD from someone and practise the questions from the CD.

Clare Gough does not cover NAT or IPV6, and the written text is very dry, and riddled with errors.

I would read Paquet and Teare book on BSCN,(...)Then for IPV6 I would use the web. Finally use the Gough CD to practise questions.
For NAT my recommendation is: Jeff Doyle routing Volume 2, though you do not need to read the whole long winded chapter for the 642-801 requirement.
Final suggestion is make your last minutes notes while reading from all these sources as having all the material in one place for the final study helps.

I see all the reviews about this book. Where do people find the time to write such a lengthy article. I will make this short and sweet.

The author does not make this book easy to read. I thought if I read the entire book maybe it will all come together...NOT. Even after reading the entire book, I found myself wondering if it was worth the time and money I put into this book. I should have returned this book when I had a chance.

I bought this book becuase I needed a refresher course and to recertify my CCNP. I plan to take the BSCI test again just as a review. This book is of very little help. I book is not worth the effort. Don't take a chance! Short and sweet!