Customer Reviews

MPLS Fundamentals

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a fairly exhaustive book on cisco MPLS implementation. The name "MPLS Fundamentals" gives an idea that this is a good place to start with, ut unfortunately not. It starts at a basic level, but in no time dives in deep. Use this book only if you want to understand specific areas in depth and not for an overview. Also, if you have access to your own lab, you will find it much easier to follow along.

As a CCIE instructor I recommend this book in many of my classes but still the main problem with the book is that the author uses a veeeery boring and lengthy language to explain even easy and straightforward topics. I'd approve this kind of text for a CCNA book but when it comes to a CCIE level MPLS discussion it just takes more and more time and makes the reader bored until it actually gets a simple message through. This however might have been a great idea to make sure the reader remains thirsty on every single page, sadly the way this book is developed prevents this from happening so you read and read and always that very word/sentence seems to remain far away until the student loses the lead. This particular issue does occur multiple times in different chapters. I don't blame the authors but certainly the technical reviewers and editors could have pruned things off a little bit to make sure readers get the most out of their time. But from a technical stand point this book covers almost all topics needed by at least CCIE routing and switching students. This also goes over many CCIE SP topics - pretty easy to understand for many especially beginners.

This is a book where you are given not only an in depth what it is and how its implemented of the protocol but you are also given great insight as to the why its done this way. You are given all of this in a very readable format. I agree with another reviewer that this is an exhaustive text into the internals of MPLS. I love the level of detail it goes into.

I have I.Pepelenjak's "MPLS and VPN Architectures" and L.Lakshman's "MPLS Configuration on Cisco IOS" for comparison, and I am glad to say that with "MPLS Fundamentals" there is at last a truly worthwhile book on the subject.

"MPLS and VPN Architectures" is confusing and incomplete but was the first book out there so gets pioneer bonus. "MPLS Configuration on Cisco IOS" is an extremely boring step-by-step listing of configurations without much conceptional overview.

So Luc de Ghein's book compares very favourably to the two others.

This is the one book you'll need to learn or as reference for MPLS. It covers everything you may need to know to start with MPLS. It gives you a solid base for advanced topics. I've been using this book for several years now and it still current. There are some complementary chapters at the author's site which keep it current with the technology.

I have recommended this book to IT personnel at carriers and they all end up with it as their main MPLS reference.

_W

This book provides good information to pick up MPLS. It will be easier, however, for the reader to follow through if he/she has well versed knowledge in IGP and BGP.

I purchased this book to get a basic over view of MPLS networks in preparations for the new CCIE R&S exam. I had no background on MPLS or Service provider networks. I read this title and by the end I was able to understand the basics and some small advanced topics. This book is great for the people that have little to no concept of MPLS, and I would recommend it for beginners. This book is not geared for the more advanced topics, so if you already have a strong MPLS back ground then this book may not be the best for you. This was a good read for me, and very easy to follow along and practice the configs if you have your own lab to practice with.

MPLS Fundamental book contain essential information for any expert CCIP and CCIE.
However, the book contain the following items that make it complex and unsuitable
To a junior IT staff reader:

1. The lab/demos don't use one lab design. Learning each chapter (and sometimes
Any page) with a new lab design, make the self study learning hard.
Although the author tried to avoid this issue, the issue reoccur in each chapter.

2. Each into/overview after chapter 6 doesn't cover the learning purpose and the
Important information that the reader will learn .

3. The "Who Should Read This Book?" section should provide information that
Expert in routing (especially in BGP 4) is a pre-requirement to learn MPLS.

I'm not sure if this is actually a fundamentals book because I didn't the first several chapters, but I bought this book to get conceptual understanding of L2VPN's. It was hard for me to find good explanations of L2VPN technology on the web. This book explained the concepts in detail and it was easy to understand. I recommend this book for anyone working in the provider industry.

I recently bought this book for having a physical material for studying MPLS because I was tired of reading on my computer. I haven't finished yet to read it but it's a good book because it includes everything about MPLS, even IPv6 over MPLS which is a must for me. Another reason I bought this book is because there're two books about MPLS but both are older than this, so I prefer the last one.