Customer Reviews

Network Warrior

5 star:		(41)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Network Warrior is the best network administration book I've ever read. I spend most of my reading time on security books, but because I lean towards network security I like reading complementary sources on protocols and infrastructure. Gary Donahue has written a wonderful book that I highly recommend for anyone who administers, supports, or interacts with networks. Network Warrior may be the best book I will read in 2007.

Why is Network Warrior so great? I think the key is the author's willingness to share personal recommendations. There are plenty of books about technology and syntax. I've read and reviewed many, most of which I liked for what they offered. However, it's rare to read a network book that says "here's how you should implement this," rather than just list options. I'm at the point in my career where I know what I might do; now I want to know what a real expert would do. Donahue provides that wisdom in many sections, but especially in Part VIII on network design.

A second reason I really enjoyed Network Warrior was its coverage of a variety of Cisco features. Sure, I had read of many of these elsewhere, but I thought Donahue made many of them clear, especially in comparison to each other. There are better references for ACLs, like Cisco Router Firewall Security by Richard Deal, but when ACLs are described next to route maps or VLAN maps, Ciscoland becomes a little easier to understand. Donahue's explanations of EtherChannel, switching algorithms, and autonegotiation are other good examples. I even admit that the author corrected my misunderstanding of QoS, as he says "QoS does not limit bandwidth, it guarantees it, which is not the same thing" (p 429). Elsewhere he says "When there is no congestion, any protocol can use any amount of available bandwidth it needs" (p 428) and "while scheduling of packets always takes places, the limits set are really only enforced during congestion" (p 427).

The third reason I like Network Warrior is the attention paid to understanding the fundamentals of certain technologies and products. The author ensures the reader gets a real grounding in telecom terms and technology, like T-1 lines. For products, I liked chapters on the 6500 series switch, content switches, and layer 3 switches.

Finally, the writing is exceptionally clear. The diagrams are excellent and make their point very well. The author's suggestions for being a better administrator apply to any technical operator. I liked Donahue's repeated suggestion to "never assume anything" and to start troubleshooting at layer 1.

Although I rated Network Warrior five stars, in a second edition I would like to see more on layer two fundamentals. I would also like to read about 802.1X and perhaps even Cisco NAC, since it seems to be becoming popular. Overall, however, you should buy and read Network Warrior right now. I loved it and will recommend it to anyone who wants to be a better network administrator.

Network Warrior by Gary Donahue may just be the best gem of 2007. I purchased this book solely based on Richard Bejtlich's glowing recommendation. To be honest, I'm typically a little weary of these `all-in-one' books, because it is hard to master `all' areas (not to mention to easily discuss `all' areas). Unquestionably, Mr. Donahue has been able to buck this trend by providing a great resource that answers many questions efficiently and quickly.

To begin with, where does most networking start - layer 2, correct? Concerning NICs and layer 2, most people take auto-negotiation to be (dare I write) plug-n-play. This is the first book I've seen where it discusses `parallel detection'. Donahue is correct on page 20 as stating auto-negotiation is a protocol. He goes on to explain the `why was it built like this' of auto-negotiation. It actually makes sense now. I showed these 2 or 3 pages to a couple of other network engineers, and they both found this information to be both novel and enlightening. Right from the start, I knew I was going to be hooked on this book.

Another gem in this book, this is the first book where I see Dr. Radia Perlman's `Algorhyme' rhyme printed since Perlman's own book. Again, probably stupid, useless info to most, but Donahue gives the foundation for a lot of the topics discussed. The discussion starting on page 207 for the 6500 backplane, Chapter 18 dedicated to the 3750, the section starting on page 156 discussing GRE tunnels and the pits and perils of recursive routing, Content Switch Modules starting on chapter 28 - all topics that are both helpful and well documented in `Network Warrior'.

I could go and on about this book. Overall, this is a great book. I've gone back to it at least 5 times a week since I purchase it last month. I can't imagine a better resource.

I give this book 5 pings out of 5:
!!!!!

This book is one of the best reference books about network security you're going to find currently on the market. It covers a wide variety of topics and issues every network administrator will face at one point or another. The author in the typical O'Reilly style also takes great steps to insure the book is not some dry tome, but occasionally puts in light comments to keep your attention. One thing I really liked about this book was its explanations of various parts of networks, how each part works, and steps to take when something fails.

Among topics covered are VLANs, Trunking, Spanning Tree Protocol, routers, tunneling, switches, firewall theory, even chapters on designing networks, all topics that any networking security book should cover and the book's author covers all of these topics well. Also included are examples of screens that you will see while installing a network feature or troubleshooting a problem.

This book is not for the squeamish or the novice, but any network admin will be glad to have it.

In preparation for the CCNA exam, I have gone through several networking books, both Cisco-specific and otherwise. I had thought that the official Cisco Press CCNA set was the best resource... until I took a chance on this tome. While I have found the Wendell Odom CCNA set to be the definitive guide to CCNA/CCENT material, I now must admit that this book is nearly - or even exactly - as essential as a CCNA exam prep guide. While the other guides read like textbooks, giving the reader adequate conceptual and theoretical information, this book felt like a nice long chat with a seasoned "network warrior" about real-world, everyday issues faced by network engineers.

What set this book apart from the thousands of pages (hey, I'm dedicated!) of material I'd already covered?

- CatOS commands; the new Cisco Press books barely mention that CatOS exists!
- anecdotes and real-world examples; even if you know how it *should* work, this book reveals how it *does* work
- objective viewpoint on Cisco technology; no "Cisco's way is the best way" dogma here
- meaningful discussion of high-end, core-strength equipment; everything in the Wendell Odom set focused exclusively on Catalyst 2960 switches and one model of router
- frank, direct, humorous, and engaging style; half the material I've covered previously was dreadfully dull
- illustrations for every concept; this makes my life so much easier when trying to explain things to fellow junior technicians

While the book may seem daunting at nearly 600 pages, I'm flying through it at about 80-100 pages per day. The text is very engaging, and the author's way of phrasing things is informative and structured yet very flowing and casual. I feel that every chapter contains some point, if not several points and concepts, that I wouldn't have known from the other books out there. What is possibly the best feature of this book is the real-world, realistic approach to every concept and issue. The Cisco Press books seem to assume that the reader will be using 2960 access layer switches running IOS 12.2 or better. Network Warrior does not make this assumption. The author makes the realistic assumption that the reader's network could have all kinds of gear networked together, and thus includes information about CatOS as well as a wide variety of Cisco hardware. Also included are some quick and dirty tricks to save time, money, and effort. For example, I didn't know that I could abbreviate almost any command in IOS ("sho" instead of "show", etc.) and still get the same result until I read this book. While I feel that the by-the-book approach of the Cisco Press material is necessary for building a clear foundation, I feel that this book's get-the-job-done take on networking is a necessary follow-up.

The book assumes some working knowledge of networking, but not too much. It doesn't explain the bare basics of networking, nor does it give a history lesson about the histories of each and every cabling standard and networking protocol. It's not a total replacement for a book about networking basics, nor a beginner's guide to the CCNA and/or Cisco equipment. What it does instead is reshape one's conception of what a network is and how to manage it. What it does as well, and does excellently, is fill in the gaps that sorely needed filling in the great mass of other Cisco material out there. If you are preparing for the CCNA, or if you have already passed and think you know all you'll need to know about managing Cisco networks, this book was written for you. I guarantee you will learn something new.

I don't normally write reviews, so that in itself should mean something. This book is great for anyone who wants to get an overview of many aspects of networking, or for the current professional who wants an easy to understand refresher. The details given are just enough to keep you interested and learning, but not too much that it will leave you bored and confused. This book covers a lot more than a CCNA level person would know, so I consider it a great step if you're working on a CCNP, or just interested in deciding what topic you should master next. It also covers a lot of real-world material, which is usually not in most other Cisco books. This book is definitely worth the read!

I found many of my questions answered very quickly and in an easy to understand format. Items like "Gad's Maxims" which you would think have nothing to do with network isues - have everything to do with how you will get your job done.

The real world examples - even the more bizarre ones like the police cruiser crashing a system overnight - sound like Hollywood has some new ways to take over the world. you jsut can't make this stuff up.

It was worth the time to read.

Upshot: And you may find yourself...in a machine room or data center. You will need this book. Pros: If you just passed your CCNA exam, or have started working with enterprise level Cisco kit, there's a lot here for you. Cons: If you DON'T work with Cisco kit, why are you here?

For anyone not acquainted with data-centers & network operations, this book shows you how the other hardware half lives. When the author says `you should have passed the CCNA' he's very serious. There are NO EXPLANATIONS of basic Cisco terms. If you are not versed in TCP/IP and SOME Cisco kit, you will be spending a LOT of time in Google. And probably asking yourself why you bought this book.

Those cautions aside, there are gems of `best practices' for non Cisco or smaller network techs here: Amid the Cisco jargon you will find practical advice even for your small business or SOHO LAN, like in Ch. 27 `Basic Firewall Theory', or Chapter 29 on different flavors of 802.11x WiFi and how to secure it. The author even introduces IPv6, with one of the most straightforward explanations I've read yet.

But what really makes this book worth it are the backstories & practical advice from a veteran to new engineers on how to handle failure scenarios as well as the politics involved in maintaining large networks.

In fact, everything from Chapter 39 (`Failure'), Chapter 40 (`GAD's Maxims') to Chapter 41 (`Avoiding Frustration') would be welcome in any IT, infosec or dev reference.

In short, I would somewhat recommend this book for non-CCNA folks interested in Network Engineering or Infrastructure. But I would highly recommend Network Warrior for the audience for which it was intended.

Disclosure: I received the eBook download from O'Reilly for review purposes. I'm not a CCNA but have been around.

One of the best networking books I have read, period. Not just how it works, but why it works and should be configured. After you study and obtain your CCNA, this is the next read that will fill in many information holes.

Highly recommended.

This is a great book on Cisco networking, so just buy it now. I've tried reading the CCNA prep books before but never got around to finishing them because they got into too much detail and I wasn't working with Cisco products enough to get hands-on experience.

At my current job I'm more involved in networking, so when I saw this book, I thought I'd give it a shot. So far it's been very helpful. This book is strictly practical in nature, so you won't get a lot of detail on Ethernet framing or the OSI model. (Note to author, it would be helpful in the second edition to include one concise chapter on the OSI model and network protocols as a refresher.)

If you have a certification such as MCSA, MCSE, Network+, or CCNA, you will have all the background info you need before reading this book. If you have no networking knowledge at all, this book is not for you.

I've been skipping around reading different chapters (this is the kind of book where you can do that). This is one of the few IT book that I've read that actually gave me practical info that I could put to use right away. Here are two examples:

1.) From Ch 2 regarding auto-negotiation: In June 2008 we moved to a new office that had all new gigabit Cisco switches that replaced our 10/100 switches. A few weeks after our move we started getting reports of errors when saving files to our EMC Celerra NAS. Users would get errors saving files to the NAS and their computers' system logs would report a "Delayed Write Failed" error.

Source: MRxSmb
EventID:50
{Delayed Write Failed} Windows was unable to save all the data for the file \Device\LanmanRedirector
The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this file elsewhere.

This looked to be a network issue so when I was poking around the Celerra Manager I noticed that its NICs were hard coded to 100 full duplex. Since we were on gigabit switches that were set to auto-negotiate, I deduced (from the knowledge gained in this chapter) that the EMC devices should be set to auto-negotiate as well. So after contacting EMC and then changing the EMC NICs to auto-negotiate, we've had no more reports of these errors.

2.) From Ch 9 regarding routing: I ran into an issue with improper configuration of the gateway of last resort during our office move. For whatever reason, the gateway of last resort was not configured on our new VLANs. We noticed the problem because we couldn't get to the Internet, but we could get to our other offices. When our network support vendor walked my manager through running the sho ip route command, I immediately saw "gateway of last resort is not set" at the top and knew that it was the issue. So even though I had only been reading this book for two weeks, it paid off. I'm sure the vendor would have found the issue after a few more minutes, but it was nice to be able to point out the issue to them.

This book won't help you become an OSPF expert, but it will help you become a better network engineer. It's one of the only books I've every seen that embraces the fact that our jobs have a gruesome amount of logistics inherent to them, far more than a programmer or DBA, for example. I'v spent the last 2+ years at MySpace, and Donahue's descriptions of the problems faced by explosive growth brought a tear to my jaded, burnt-out eye. Finally someone understands we're not just idiots! (If you disagree, try scaling from 10Gbps in transit to 80 in one year, then shoot me an email :) ) Even better, since his anecdotes and advice on the practicalities of our niche are often only mildly technical, they're easy to read. I was able to blast through 100 pages at a time, often laughing and nodding, while still learning a new spin on simple things like IP address allocation.

On a more technical level, this book fills a ton of gaps that aren't covered anywhere else, or the documentation is difficult to find or understand. The section on storm-control was excellent in this sense. If you do nothing else, go to Borders and read that section. It's useful information in its own right, but demonstrates Donahue's tendency to spin something simple in a way that shows you something new. I picked up a lot of weird details in this book, even if I skimmed half of it.

I also noticed a lot of his sidenotes pointed out some very common pitfalls, such as appending a space to your password in PPP on one side of a link by using the context help, then not doing so on the other end, and wondering why your stupid link won't come up.

So what are the cons? None really, just a few things I would have liked to see in there (none of which detract from the 5-star rating).

- I would have liked to hear how Donahue approaches the issue of spares and money, specifically convincing management to buy spares, or hiding them in budgets
- The NTP section could have used a blurb on anycast, which works beautifully for NTP
- I would have liked to see him mention the troubleshooting assistance that change management provides, since if something breaks and your engineers issued a change request, you pretty much know where to start
- I'm also a huge fan of peer-review for CM, as having a manager rubber-stamp your ACL update is ... of limited technical value

I'd say that, along with about 5-10 other books that go into hardcore depth on various technologies (Doyle's routing books, Halabi's BGP, QOS Voice exam guide, etc.), this book should be on a shelf near you at work. If you're already pretty advanced it's a really quick read that tosses some golden nuggets at you when you least expect it.

One more thing, since one guy punished the book's rating for being Cisco-centric, I'd like to take a moment to point to the Book Description, specifically the part that says, "Network Warrior is a Cisco-centric book". If you're at a book store (do they still exist?) and thus do not have access to this description, please see the first paragraph on the back of the book, specifically the part that says, "...helps you deal with real Cisco networks..."