Customer Reviews

Network Fundamentals, CCNA Exploration Companion Guide

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Just finished this course at the local community college. This book has 'necessary redunancies' which helps review key networking concepts throughout the book. I have the third edition (2008)and have quite a few issues with mistakes and typo's. One example chart on subnetting holds many errors. Some of the people in my class are first-timers with no background in networking. They're beginning a new career in networking and they're relying on Cisco engineers and publishers to submit accruate information but it doesn't help when the material you're studying is replete with errors. The technical writers and proof readers needed to pay more attention to the material.
Otherwise, like I said, this is a good book on the whole. Personally, reviewing networking concepts over and over, as this book presents, is a great way for me to learn, especially when it comes to subnetting and subnetting a subnet.

This was my first Networking course. I found this text to be a good complement to the online material. While you could certainly pass the course without it, it presented the material in a different style, giving you an extra chance to grasp the concepts. For the most part it is well written and easy to follow. Based on my experience with this text and the curriculum as a whole I have decided to continue in the course sequence and pursue CCNA certification.

I would not bother purchasing the companion lab manual. All the necessary information is available in a pdf from the Cisco Networking Academy and can easily be printed (or simply read from the computer screen).

I obviously bought this book for the CCNA class that I am taking. As textbooks go, this book is very well written and makes the understanding easier as you go through the class (as opposed to trying to do my reading online through the cisco academy). Highly recommend buying the book if you are taking the class.

Great for people wanting to get ahead in networking. It is not like a normal textbook. It makes you look for the answers to the end of chapter questions.

This is pretty useful text for people (like me) who previously to reading this book had little knowledge of nuts and bolts of networking.
It covers plenty of ground, however I felt that some actual questions from cisco academy were not answered in the text. I almost didn't use the online course materials, so I don't know if they would compensate that gap. But most of the things required on tests were covered.
Anyways, I took a class to get more acquainted with networking fundamentals. With the nuts and bolts of communication and protocols and processes involved, and I think this book served that purpose pretty well. I hope however that it was colorful. Other than that, I am novice to networking [not the computer science in general] and I can tell that this book is pretty good if you're new to networking, like me.

This book closely follows the first semester of the Cisco CCNA material, which is all online through the Cisco Networking Academy. If you like having a hardcopy available as a back-up to the online material, then this book does the job. If you are comfortable following the material in the online Academy, then maybe you don't really need this book.

I bought this book for a Cisco Academy class. It is a textbook, so it goes deeper into technical aspects of CCNA level networking than the well known CCNA/CCENT exam preparation books, such as Odom's or Lammle's.

This is the first of 4 books published by Cisco for the Cisco Academy curriculum, and is the most current version. The other 3 that follow, (logicall), are, Routing Protocols, Switching and Wireless, and Accessing the Wan, all developed for the Academy Exploration classes. I highly recommend these books as THE FOUNDATION for your CCNA studies, whether you are enrolled in a Cisco Academy program or not. These 4 books comprise the "Exploration Series", not to be confused with the "Discovery Series" of Academy curriculum books. They are similar and both prepare you for the CCNA, but this is the series you want. You can find out more about the differences and why they have two versions of the same basic curriculum at Cisco's website.

I found these books all very well written, and its nice to have good sturdy hardbacks for you library. Much reference is made to Ciscos Packet Tracer, which Academy students have access to, but you don't need packet tracer to benefit from these books. Also there are really good end of chapter quizzes with detailed answers that really reinforce the chapter material.

I got this book because I don't like to read books online. The online material for this class is certainly good but I think it's good to have something you can hold in your hands. I find the book is fairly well written with only a few typographical errors. I have mainly been reading the book and have been acing all the exams. Of course, I've read the chapters a few times apiece.

This book is really fundamental. It is easy to read but boring since the author spent time explaining almost every thing even the very basic electrical engineering subjects. However, it provides a great deal of knowledge in the IT area.

This is the newest version, and I find it tightly coordinates with the Networking 101 course I am taking at the local community college. This will be a first step towards certification. I have scanned the book, and read the first two chapters in great detail. It may be that prior reviews are out of date or that there are errors later in the book, but as a nit-picking former law review editor, I found only two words wrong, and then only because they were not in bold face. The college provides packet tracer. By taking the chapter exams and doing the packet tracer examples in the textbook I feel well prepared for the next class and its quiz. This is one of the best textbooks I have used, good layout, proper English, and precise as to the "Cisco plan."