Customer Reviews

Guide to Networking Essentials, Second Edition

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Please be aware that this book (and others by the same publisher)are meant for colleges and/or trade schools and thus the answers to exercises, labs, projects, etc are available ONLY to instructors. Furthermore, neither the publisher nor the authors maintain a website for errata so you are on your own if you misunderstand a concept due to typos and false information.

Learning the foundation and fundamentals of networking is most important to passing the Network+, CCNA, MCSE, CAN, CIW, Inet+ exams and this book will get you started towards the certification success you are looking for.

Updated to cover Windows 2000 and Linux, this book is made for the classroom setting. The authors include hands-on projects and case projects to help the student learn in more than a self-study and lecture setting.

With topics like network concepts, design of VLANs and topologies, media, nics, protocols, architectures like 10 and 100 mpbs, token ring, apple talk, FDDI, CDDI, ATM and SONET, simple and complex networks, WANS, and troubleshooting, you have everything you need to gain a great foundation for the networking arena.

With everything in the book there is also review questions, chapter summaries and key terms for each chapter. Overall this is the perfect teaching guide.

From a guy who has an electronics engineering degree, military aviation, and general tech savvy: I like this book a lot. We use it as our book for a "Networking Essentials" college course. Most of my classmates have prior PC network experience, and we have some novices; I think any intelligent student interested in Ethernet and other PC network issues will also like this book. Tech savvy and Ethernet is the right path!...the future looks great!

Although this book was purchased as a text book required for a graduate level course, its vast amount of network history and detailed diagrams of different types of networks, as well as the many lists of statistics on networking media, make this book an invaluable quick reference for up and coming network admins and engineers.

There's a lot in this book that is good. However, it's focused towards the future Microsoft server administrator, not the future router or switch maintainer. I'd suggest a CCNA-training book for that.

Great book but is best used in a classroom situation .. I got it for selfstudy and don't have answers for questions at end of chapters .. but it is very well written

So far I have not had any problems understanding what they are teaching. The images helps visualize the concept.
Great book for my class.

If you're new to networking and are looking for a book to adequately teach you the basics, avoid this one. Although the text does a fine job of introducing the essential topics, it provides five (5) types of information about these topics: Contradictory, Incorrect, Incomplete, Incomprehensible, and Decent. Since NE is a mnemonic and acronym driven subject, here are a few mnemonics to help you remember this: IDIoCy and DICey. The book is very poorly written; I read 3 other books on NE in the same time it took me to get through this book's garbled syntax and errata. The decent part is the summary tables provided throughout the book on cabling, architecture, protocols, etc. The "limited version" Transcender test CD provided with the text is OK, but it is essentially a teaser to get you to buy the "full version." Instead, I recommend the Sybex NE Study Guide (Chellis and Perkins), NE Unleashed (Sportack), and Accelerated MCSE NE Study Guide (Kinnaman). Using these, I just passed the 70-058 exam with a 900.

While this book wasn't written specifically for CompTIA's Network+ exam, I found it extremely useful and informative. I have read many networking books, and this one explained the concepts very well, especially at what layers various hardware devices work. I bought it for a college networking class and kept it after the class was over because I thought it was so useful. I passed my Network+ exam a couple of weeks ago with the help of this book.

Book was excellent and EXACTLY what the school was selling for $127. I got it for almost half price!! I paid for one day shipping ($17) and received it in 2 days, BEFORE MY NEXT CLASS. AWESOME!!!! And still payed less than the bookstore at the college by over $50.