Customer Reviews

Network+ Guide to Networks

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

I used this book in a Networking Essentials class that I took at a local college. This book is good for someone who has little experience and wants to learn about the various aspects of networking, or maybe for someone who has experience and needs a refresher on broad based concepts. But despite the book's title, Network+ Guide to Networks should NOT be your one-stop shop if you are looking to pass the Network+ exam. CompTia's Network+ test is rather detail oriented, and Network+ Guide to Networks is just too broad in scope to be effective (I passed with an 875 out of 900, but I had prior networking experience and I used some third-party software to help me prepare). It almost seems like they started this book with networking 'essentials' in mind, but then stamped Network+ on the cover at the last minute in order to generate some additional sales. All-in-all, not a bad book, but it's just not up to task for the demands of the Network+ exam.

This book is officially approved courseware for the CompTIA Network+ exam. It has been approved also by the CSSIA (Center for Systems Security and Information Assurance). The book is very comprehensive. But as all textbooks go it has both strengths and weaknesses. In this review I will try to highlight some of both.

Like most computer industry books, this one comes with a supplemental CD. That CD includes the Certblaster and MeasureUP self-test software and other files the student will find useful.

Each chapter begins with a highlight box that will outline what will be covered in the chapters. Then it includes a letter or story from someone working in the industry. At first these seemed a little cheesy, but as I moved further and further into the book I realized that they were a great source for a feel for the material in the real world, and not just in the classroom or self-study. On the side of the pages are some green bars; these bars highlight specific information you are required to know for the CompTIA exam, and which exam objective they are part of.

One of the greatest strengths is that each chapter ends with a mini glossary of key terms or new terms from that chapter. There is also a complete glossary of all of these terms at the back of the book. Then at each chapter's end there is a series of review questions - multiple choice questions much like those found in self-test software and on the actual exam. Finally, each chapter has a series of hands-on projects. Each project gets progressively more difficult.

The greatest strength of this book is that it has all-encompassing hardware, software, different OS's. The weakness is that it is a lot of material packed very densely into nearly a thousand pages. When I did the school program, we did this book in 3 weeks. For most it was a little overwhelming.

If you want to write the CompTIA Network+ exam, this is a great book to help get you there. Pay special attention to the Novell Netware sections. There were a lot of questions on the exam about those. And Good Luck!

This was a textbook for a master's level course on "Intro to PC Networking". The book covers UNIX/NT/Netware and breaks up hardware and media into very logical parts and has some very comprehensive explanations of key terms BUT some of the remarks about specific operating systems are dead wrong! This book just came out (2000) and they should know NT 4.0 by now, but the technical proofreader obviously didn't do his job. I can't recommend it because of the incorrect information.

I am just finishing a college course for which the fourth edition of this book was the required text. I will be filing a written complaint with the department head and the administration.

This book is exceedingly frustrating as it contains errors too numerous to mention, starting with the very first review question in chapter one (correct answer is "None of the Above"), obvious since networks preceded floppies! My first computer used cassette tapes for data in and out. It was a year or two before floppy drives became popular. The authors youth and inexperience disqualifies her for such historical dogma.

I have withheld my disgust hoping that things would get better but they didn't. Virtually every week either I or another student would be pointing out errors in either the text or the failure of the correct answer to be among the multiple choices offered for review questions. This continued right through chapter 12, the last we covered in this class. In the review questions for this chapter, #11 and # 12 are more examples of "none of the above". For #11, since 100BASE-RX allows for 300m network length, there should be no obvious issues. The instructor suggested "B. excessive late collisions" was the desired answer, but that would only be true if the author had said SEGMENT length (limited to 100m) instead of NETWORK length (p.105). For number 12, the correct answer, a PERFORMANCE tester, is not among the choices. A simple continuity tester (the supposed correct answer) can't test the frequency response needed to define CAT6 standards (p.645, 654). Question 15 offers an erroneous premise, as the connection from switch would typically go to a patch panel not a punch-down block. Question 19 is rather baseless, since there is no standard for amber or blinking lights. Those things would be MFG/device specific and therefore not generalized. One could assume that something is going on for that port, but without more information such as a device manual that explains what a flashing amber LED indicated, determining exactly what the problem is would be mere guess work, requiring blind component and media testing.

Bottom line: Highly overpriced for this abysmal quality and not worthy of a college level training manual. The prolific amount of errors leads to a huge waste of time as those who try to pay attention to details get side-tracked trying to find some non-existent answers in the text. If these careless errors were not corrected by the 4th edition, I would have little faith that the 5th edition will be any better. At least the publisher could offer an online forum, errata list or document to alert the reader to these problems so they won't waste time on wild goose chases, looking for accurate information.

If you're looking for an informative and logically ordered book, this is not it. The author seems to repeat simple information 2 or 3 times, thus adding greatly to the number of pages in an already heavy book while more complex concepts are only explained once. To add to the confusion, the review questions at the end of each chapter seem either too simplistic, or focus on trivial information that is buried deep in an obscure paragraph in the middle of the chapter, or the question offers choices that do not exactly match up with the answer in the book, leaving you to make the best guess. You can never get every answer right unless your brain is very attuned to this author's teaching style. One gets the feeling that you must memorize every single word and paragraph in order to pass the questions at the end.
The basic concepts as they are covered are a little better to understand as the examples do not depend so much on experience and a hands-on knowledge. But for the most part, this book seems geared to students who already have a decent amount of experience and merely need to learn the particulars to pass the certification. Due to the author's awful teaching style, I wouldn't recommend this book for that purpose either. Indeed, some of the information seems either wrong or out of date. I often found myself having to check with internet sources to get the information or just for plain clarification. No course book is perfect, but this one fails because the mistakes are too numerous.
If Tamara's point in making it hard to find information is to make you think about the answer, she has only made it more tiring to read through and harder to focus on what needs to be learned. I shouldn't have to read the same paragraph 4 times to understand what information is being conveyed.
It really is necessary to have quite a few more illustrations to complement the text, and the text could have been reduced if the information had been written more elegantly.
What is also extremely irritating is the constant gender switching that takes place. She will often use the feminine to describe a person in leadership, and then use the masculine to describe a person who is in a more menial or less important position or often someone who has made a mistake. It is the norm now to refer to various traditional male job roles interchangeably with the female attribute, but she seems to take almost every opportunity to mention a person's sex when it could have easily been written to be gender neutral. This is incredibly distracting because it breaks up the flow when you find yourself having to re-read the sentence because of this. The IT industry is male dominated, therefore the text ought to reflect the current trends or just be neutral.
Overall, this book is not worth your time or your money, even though it still manages to inform and teach, especially in the beginning. But you will be needing another book to study if you want to pass the certification test, I can almost guarantee it.

Does what it says on the box - it's a good reference, with much detail and useful practical advice for the upcoming network technician or IT support professional. I think its usefulness is fairly limited outside of those fields but as an introduction to computer networking, it will give you plenty of information. Unfortunately the general tone of the book is reflective of its introductory purpose and more experienced readers might find it slightly annoying. If you are a software professional who is more interested in the programming aspects of networking, consider W. Richard Stevens's "TCP/IP Illustrated" series.

The book is well organized and has an easy flow.
As a complete novice in Networking it was hard for me to break-in the language and concept of Networking.

The book provides depth both for a novice as well as intermediate students without getting biased to any specific vendor.

I am using this book for my IT class to get my certification for network+.

My classmates and i have discussed the layout of the book and our findings are that while the book contains tons of information that are necessary to get your certification but it was too much to assimilate in a short amount of time.

The problem with this book is that it tries to fill your head with so much text information that by the end of a chapter you are lost because their was too much info to digest. You have to reread the chapters several time in order to try to grasp what the author is trying to teach you in said chapter.


All we get his info over info but we have no clue as to where it is really applied or why we are learning this information at all. It would have been nice to see pictures associated with the concepts that the author was talking about.

As an analogy, i felt like i was trying to get a surgeon's certifcate but all the teaching i got was from a book that had no pictures to show me what to do in order to perform surgeries. How can i operate if i can't make the difference between organs inside the body....

At the end of my readings I did not feel confident at all in my knowledge of this book and was doubtfull i could get my certification on a first try relying on this book information and the way it was presented to me.

This book becomes nothing more than a big memory exercise and if you have a poor memory be prepared to fail your certification.

The only reason we had to use this book in our class is that the company that certifies you is the company that made this book.

I would not recomment this book as an entry level book to this subject as it is too much info to digest in one book.

In my opinion, if you have to read a chapter several times in order to understand what the author is trying to convoy it means to me that the book was not done properly.

This book needs to be revised with the mindset that it has to include more visuals and be an entry level book to certify people for the job.

If you plan on becoming Network+ certfied and you are a huge visual learner stay far way from this book. Get another book that bears the CompTIA seal and check if it is the right book for you.

This book here clearly wasn't the right book for me and my classmates.

Thanks

There is a lot of info in this book.
There is also a CD (if included with used copies) that has questions to help the user study for the networking+ exam.
I used this book for a networking class.
The book includes review questions and exercises at the end of each chapter to help you get the most of the material presented.

Material includes chapters of TCP/IP, network security, Network operating systems, networking hardware, and other things. The text and drawn diagrams clearly explain things. You will not be sitting there wondering "what does that have to do with anything?"
This book is probably best suited for someone with some networking knowledge, but a beginner could benefit from it as well.
You need a book to study so you are prepared for the CompTia Networking+ test? Then do not pass up this book.

There are review questions at the end of each chapter. I have progressed through Chapter 11 to date. Every single review section contains questions that cannot be answered by information in the text. Replies from the publisher revealed that needed information was deleted in the editing process. Their suggestion was to buy the next edition. (Customer service at its best, eh?) My suggestion is to skip this book altogether and find a better edited Networking Fundamentals guide.