Customer Reviews

CCNP(TM) Switching Study Guide (Exam 640-504) (Book/CD)

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The text of this book is quite good. The CD is bare bones compared to this series' BCRAN book/CD combination.

The CDs sell book. The info can be gotten any number of places. But the CD helps in preparing for the multiple choice test.

This CD is bare bones. Many of the questions are direclty lifted from the end of chapter quizes. And the "exam sim" has only one mode - test mode of all the possible questions, with no "instant explanation" or links to more info.

Buy the book for the text, buyer beware of the CD.

My knowledge of switching techniques is greatly increased over the past several months and one reason is due to books like this one. The authors ability to detail complex topics and yet simplify the explanation is making is easier for every day.

In this 620 plus page book, that can be used in a classroom environment, start the road to certification with an introduction to switching and layers 2, 3 and 4 and then is continues with switch block concepts, this is the first book I know of to cover this topic.

The authors then explain VLAN and spanning tree protocols very well, they make every attempt to give you more than enough information. Also another first time topic is the Inter-Vlan.

You then go into multi-layer switching, HSRP, multi-casting, Diagnostics and remote management. As with other books from Osborne there is practice questions, exercises, lab questions and a self-test all this coupled with an abundance of diagrams, figures, router screen shots and tables.

Finally another Osborne standard is the cd, this one has over 200 questions and is put together with ExamSim and CertTrainer. The layout of this book is more that exam material it is material that can be used for later reference.

This book does have a fair coverage of the various topics required for the Cisco exam, but is absolutely riddled with typos, inconsistencies and downright errors. A single thorough editing would have cleared up the vast majority of these problems.

I had to augment the book information with other information, including another 640-604 book, web information, etc. before I felt comfortable with the covered material.