Rating: 
Summary: This with practice software.....passed first time.
Review: Great book that covers all routing protocols needed to pass the exam and apply to real world scenarios. This book does give a lot of debug command outputs so one would not need equipment however it is recommended because the labs in this give you good hands on experience. This with practice test software like boson was all I needed.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Book for CCNA
Review: I have been using this book to study for the CCNA. It seems all books have technical errors however I have found none so far. Hats off to the technical editor. The book does give enough detail to pass the routing exam, but it does not fully cover the details of IGP's or BGP.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: I have just started reading this book and, already, I see that is superb. It is far and away better than any tech book I have read.
Rating:
Summary: Good enough for the exam
Review: I passed 503 this morning with score 900. This book is not easy to read, but it does cover almost all the exam topics. Read it two or three times, you should be able to pass the exam with high score.
Rating:
Summary: This is a vwery excellent book
Review: I passed the test with a 873 out of 1000, needed 690 to pass. very good book, excellent! This book along with hands-on, the ccprep.com and cert21.com/cisco web sites . Their practice test simulates the real thing. There is also some very good white papers on the documentation homepage of cisco's website. A lot of questions on OSPF, BGP and EIGRP, know your commands.Good Luck! An excellent book Catherine, keep up the good work!
Rating:
Summary: Depends on what your goal is
Review: I read the courseware that this book was extracted from. If your goal is to pass the CCNP 2.0 Routing exam, this book coupled with the Coriolis Exam Cram is the way to go. I used both of them and got an 875 on the exam. I also learned quite a bit. If your goal is to get in depth knowledge of routing protocols and a good overview of TCP/IP, the Doyle book "Routing TCP/IP" is the way to go.
Rating:
Summary: A very good book for the Switching test
Review: I read this book a few months ago, and it certainly hits on all of the points that you need to sucessfully pass the Cisco Switching test. It is also a good book for taking someone with little (or no) experience with Cisco switches, and taking them to a point of competency. The book by Clark and Hamilton is also very good.
Rating: 
Summary: Bound to leave you confused!
Review: I would save yourself some time by looking for other books. I was also daunted by this book's size and determined to master the material solely based on earlier reviews. So I read this book several times and have the following comments: The organization of OSPF material has the following drawbacks: a) lack of context, the commands are covered only after some theory is given in a dry definition form. This is great, you may say, but to me it was not easy to put the definitions into context. The material for OSPF is mostly from the Cisco OSPF Design Guide (read those skimpy pages to get the most understanding of OSPF). So it looks like from the OSPF design guide, they seperated the theory and interspersed it with some other text and moved the configuration towards the chapter end. The second OSPF chapter requires serious apology to the readers: inter area routing and external routing are impossible to describe and make students understand without introducing redistribution(this is introduced only at the end). However, this makes the material extremely difficult to understand. EIGRP is OK. BGP is another complex set of definitions, and several reads are needed before even trying to piece together the definition and understand how to put everything together. So: for OSPF start from OSPF design guide by Cisco. Not sure about where to go for EIGRP and BGP: I got a hang of those material by several reads of the Paquet and Teare material.
Rating:
Summary: A better Cisco Press..
Review: I'm not usually happy with Cisco Press books. This is one of their better ones. I used this and the Mcgraw hill/Osbourne. This was well written, covered everything on the exam. Read the two and scored 900. Recommend this one highly.
Rating: 
Summary: Building Scalable Cisco Networks
Review: Please note that this book is for a retired exam. The new exam replacing this one is Building Scalable Cisco Internetworks (BSCI) 640-901
Don't waste your money!
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