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CCNP Practical Studies: Switching (CCNP Self-Study)
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Author: Justin Menga
List Price: $49.95
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 1587200600
Publisher: Cisco Press (15 October, 2003)
Edition: Hardcover
Sales Rank: 44,930
Average Customer Rating: 5 out of 5
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Customer ReviewsRating: 5 out of 5
Practical Switching guide
There is a new contender in the heavy weight LAN switching category of networking books. Justin Menga's CCNP Practical Studies: Switching, is an excellent addition to the Cisco Press family. Many consider the Clark and Hamilton book the acme of LAN switching, but Menga's book stands right there in the upper echelons.The book starts off with basic switch connectivity - identifying the different Cisco Catalyst switches, operating systems, supervisor engines and switching modules as well as installing, configuring, monitoring and troubleshooting a Catalyst switch on a network. More advanced topics such as VLANS, trunking , spanning tree, inter-VLAN routing, layer 3 switching, multicast and security are covered in depth. Each chapter has several configuration scenarios that help in understanding the subject matter and reinforcing concepts.
Working with actual equipment would be best but for those who do not have access to switching equipment; the configurations are detailed and clear enough to follow. For those who will be implementing VoIP on their networks, a good grasp of QoS is essential. The QoS chapter adequately covers how to configure end-to-end quality of service on a LAN. This work is a great effort by Justin Menga and I highly recommend this book both as a reference book and to prepare for the CCNP switching exam.
Rating: 5 out of 5
More than the Skinny
This book is certainly "practical". There are some passages in each chapter for just reading, but the majority of pages in this book are showing actual commands and outputs from several models of Cisco switches. I intend to keep it arms lenghth from my desktop at work as a reference. What if you have a switch down one day because the operating system is corrupted? CCNP Practical Studies: Switching has what to do in this situation for both the Cisco IOS and Catalyst OS.
Justin Menga's 958-page manual is not for beginners to Cisco, or for the CIO who just wants to know the "skinny". In these pages are the dirty details of how the lower layers of the OSI model work in today's campus LANs. Besides CCNP and CCIE candidates, any LAN administrator will find this book useful. The individual who reads this book should have a basic understanding of networking and Cisco equipment.
The first chapter reviews the specifications and capabilities of at least six families of Cisco switches, familiarizing the reader with the equipment that will be used throughout the book. Special attention is placed on the 3550 series switch, which is covered in the CCIE exam. VLANs are covered from many angles in several chapters. This includes concepts, how it works with the big expensive switches verses the lower end models, and the Catalyst versus IOS models. Multilayer switching (MLS) is compared to the next-generation CEF-based Layer 3 switching. However, both are covered thoroughly since both will around for awhile.
A great extra in the book for the certification candidate and teacher are the labs in Chapter 11 and the solutions to them in the appendices. I would really consider the entire book sort of a lab. But the ending labs cover the major parts of the book with two comprehensive assignments. Menga does seem repetitive at times. For example, he remids us several times that if we manually set the speed and duplex on one end of a switched Ethernet connection we should manually set it on the other end. This redundancy is perhaps justified by the probablity that Justin Menga has seen this error many times in network troubleshooting and it can also be an intermittent problem: the worst kind to solve.
One can appreciate the amount of time it takes to write a book of this magnitude. The author had to have access to a number of switches and routers to produce all the output and screen shots in the book. He also shares a number of "notes" that are helpful. Such as, that Cisco has discontinued supplying a tftp server program and recommends a place to download freeware that he has tested.
When reading computer self-study guides, occasionally one finds a volume that accomplishes its goal so well that no other book is needed. CCNP Practical Studies: Switching comes close to this ideal. Improvements that the book could have include a small glossary to help the student define terms that are unfamiliar.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Pretty good Cisco Switching guide!
This book goes hand in hand with Cisco LAN Switching book by Clark Hamilton but is more up to date and focuses more on Cisco's latest switching hardware and technology. There are labs for every chapter though the equipment needed to do the labs is very extensive. Book is great for CCNP / CCIE wanna be's. I found that the book could have been proof read better as there are a lot of editing mistakes. The book covers a lot of material. Vlans, Inter Vlans, Layer 3 Switching, Qos, STP, VTP and more. Switches covered are 6500's, 4500's, and 3550's and a few others.. Cisco IOS and CatOS are also covered. I particularly liked the labs even though I don't have all the equipment needed to perform them. There are lots of diagrams and configs to help get you through the labs. I was particularly interested in the real world scenarios that are discussed in the book as this helps me get a better understanding of how other networks are setup and would aid me in designing my own LAN / WAN. Overall, I give this book 5 stars because there is just nothing else out there that can compare with the depth of knowledge contained in this book.
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