Customer Reviews

CCNP Practical Studies: Routing

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

CCNP Practical Studies: Routing skips over all the ISO, TCP/IP and Basic Subnetting chapters that appear in every network book printed since the invention of the Cisco router... If you are reading this book you probably don't need them anyway. It covers Subnetting and VLSM in context of route summarization only.

The practicals are labs that you can do if you have the equipment. If you don't have the equipment, there are all the screenscapes you would normally see on the router console printed in the book. The only complaint I have about the book is that there is no "suggested equipment" list that lets you know what equipment is used throughout the exercises. I don't think the author expected all the configurations to be done in a home lab as he suggests a 6509 as the switch used in CCNP Routing Self-Study Lab. It would definitely help us crazyfolk that scour ebay for network equipment to keep next to our stereo, TV, and entertainment center.

Practicals included:

RIPv2
Basic OSPF
OSPF w RIP Redistribution
EIGRP
EBGP
Advanced BGP
Route Redistribution
And Finally the CCNP Routing Self-Study Lab that ties it all together

There are also many scenarios in each chapter that are almost as useful as the labs.

Although, it's possible to pass the exam without ever looking at a Cisco router, BUY THIS BOOK anyway. If you have been collecting Cisco equipment, and are looking for some exercises that will help you learn, this is a must have.

Finally, the chapter on advanced OSPF covers a bit of Integrated IS-IS and IS-IS redistribution. For those of you that know the new Cisco exam that recently replaced "Routing" (Called BCSI or Building Cisco Scalable Internetworks) has quite a bit about IS-IS on the exam. That is not covered at all in the BCSN books. Todd Lammle has got a book out that covers the new exam material

Hi

This book contains many mistakes but does fill a gap for those wanting to prepare for the CCNP with hands-on experience.

I actually learned a lot from the mistakes in this book. But when you're studying on your own and trying to build your confidence on routing it is really disconcerting to not be able to reach the same results as the book. It's only with lots more reading (a good thing!) that you discover the screen output in the book isn't accurate!

I think with the Errata in hand (or preferably a reprinted edition) this is still a book worth having but 4/5 star reviewers must not have followed the exercises on real equipment!

Jc

This book has alot of good exercises which illustrate useful and valuable concepts and their implementation.

However, there are many, many inconsistancies between the config files, the output from show commands, and the figures. A typical example is Figure 5-5 on page 236. R4 in the figure has two serial connections but the interface addresses are not shown on the figure. In the config file for R4 on page 244, only one serial interface has been configured. In some labs, the output from sample show commands includes intefaces or networks not configured in the figures or config files.

I don't think I have worked through any lab in this book involving more than two routers which does not have this type of error. I think that the author has done a good job choosing which concepts to illustrate and then coming up with some labs to illustrate them. Too bad that no one got the labs actually fully configured and working before taking the screen captures. The result is that many labs take about twice as long to complete as they should since you must figure out what are the mistakes and missing information to complete them.

I just got this book, and went to cisco press to look for erratas'. There are 18 yes 18, pages of errata for this book! And at places even the errata is wrong. So cisco press please get your act together and reprint the book with the corrections.

I purchased this book hopeful to put my recently acquired $12,000 CCIE-level lab to work wrapping up my CCNP before moving on to my CCIE.

Boy, was I disappointed. This book is riddled with errors and omissions. You will spend more time trying to read between the lines and troubleshoot than you will actually learning the material.

Case in point: the advanced OSPF scenario sets you up with 8 different routers. After cabling them in, I started configuring them -- only to find that the instructions conflicted with each other (are the loopbacks supposed to be advertised as /32, or /24?), or were missing alltogether, forcing me go to the end of the lesson to pull the WAN IP addresses for each router from the resulting configs themselves!

There is a reason this book isn't sold on cisco.com anymore. B

I went to Ciscopress' website; this is book is no longer available from them...

My guess is that they got hammered on the errata and are in the process of producing a 2nd ed. You may want to hold off a little on this title if you can.

I purchased CCNP Practical Studies: Routing by Henry Bengamin.
It contains way too many errors, and the errata is a joke.

Cisco Press should be ashamed.

Sample CCIE lab - A clear vision that moves from basics to deployment, One of the many things I like about this book is how well its content and its title go together. Some other books and courses use examples with no explanation on why or what command to use, this author explains it for beginners to experts, I asked a CCIE to look at the sample lab and he said it was harder than the lab he had and he did the exam 4 times, save yourself the cost of a ccie lab, $1250 and invest in this title, you can even email the author, At the same time, the author is clear that he is writing a book for people who are deploying IP solutions, not people who are writing code for routers. From CCNA to CCIE all cisco candidates will benefits from this amazing title,
While some of this material is found in earlier Cisco documents, Henry has added much more value in advising when to use techniques, not just how. He also gives useful pointers to the continuing development of IP, which is not standing still!
The book organizes a great deal of information and then gives additional real-world experience for the designer of medium-sized enterprise networks
A must for ccnp and ccie candidates, the ccie lab on its own is worth the purchase price.

As an CCIE candidate, I found this book is very informative and very accurate. It disects the details of the routing protocol, including IS-IS, RIP, IGRP, EIGRP, OSPF , BGPO and how to route between different domains just like you need to do in a ccie lab examination.

. How many books out there do you see that talk about IS-IS or how to route IP from RIP to GRP to EIGRP to BGP successfully.? If you want to gain basic and advance about default route, static routing, IGRP, EIGRP, OSPF, ISIS, this is the book for you. Of course, with lots and lost of hands on practice are presented and explained in full. Its worth the investment 10 stars for me,

Cheers
Dave

Having passed the CCNA Exam I naturally want to further my certification with the CCNP, I am currently studying the Routing exam and have several books. I found this book to be a nice addition to the material I already have.

The book is 550 pages and the routing exam objectives are covered fully. The book has over 40 scenarios covering VLSM, routing basics, OSPF, IS-IS, EIGRP and BGP. The scenarios are not just walk through example you really need to think things out before beginning, a refreshing change.

I also very much like the 1 14 hour study lab, as well as the review question at the end of each chapter. Each scenario has code examples to follow and learn by and again with the lab you really have to think about what you are doing be fore proceeding forward.

One tiny drawback is that there was no simulator, so you have to have access to equipment. If you are in a formal training setting this should be no problem. Overall a very good book

I don't know what the folks giving this book 5 starts are smoking. It's obvious they haven't read it. The errata contains only two minor corrections for a book with errors on nearly every page. How can configuration statements and command outputs that one would think were simply copied verbatim from a console session contain so many errors?

And we're not just talking typographical errors and misprints. One exercise uses pings to test an access list-based route map on the same router. One problem: access lists are designed to filter traffic going through the router. They will not filter traffic that has originated from the router. So how was the sample output shown in the book generated? Was it just made up by the author?

Shameful - absolutely shameful.