Rating: 
Summary: DO NOT DEPEND ON THIS BOOK FOR THE CCIE WRITTEN TEST!!!
Review: Although good information is in this book (the reason I gave it 3 stars and not 2), it does not go into enough detail as was required on the new CCIE written test. It seems this book was written for the new CCIE 350-001 exam. I felt that my years of experience and this book would be all I needed to pass the test since it was published by Cisco Press. I could not have been more wrong. I just took the new test and the level of detail required to pass was not even touched in this book. I do, however, recommend this book to one's library of information for studying for the new CCIE written test.
Rating: 
Summary: At last
Review: At last, a Cisco Press book dedicated to the written.
The previous reviewer has no clue about the cert. What he missed is that the new version will also be called 350-001 (I am not a cisco employee, just a cisco fan). Based on the sample chapter and content of the book offered by other web sites, I can say that it is a book for the new exam version. It covers every topic listed in the new exam blue print, and this is the main reason why I give it 5 stars,Regards.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Reference Tool...
Review: CCIE Routing and Switching Exam Certification Guide
ISBN: 1587200538 CCIE Routing and Switching Exam Certification Guide by Anthony Bruno is a very good reference for those preparing for the CCIE Routing and Switching Qualification exam.
The book is broken into the following chapters: 1. CCIE Certification, Test Preparation, and Using This Book
2. Networking Concepts Review
3. Cisco Equipment Operations
4. Local-Area Networks and LAN Switching
5. Wide-Area Networks
6. Internet Protocols
7. Static Routing and Distance Vector Routing Protocols
8. IP Link-State Routing Protocols
9. Border Gateway Protocol
10. Administrative Distance, Access Lists, Route Manipulation, and IP Multicast
11. Traffic Management
12. Multiservice Networking, IPX Networking, and Security The chapters structure of the book follow the exam blueprint very closely. The main thing to note with this book is that it was originally written for the previous version of the qualification exam. So every thing that is included in this book is not necessarily still on the new blueprint. The idea behind this guide is to provide key information pertaining to the items that are the exam blueprint. This guide was not meant to provide in depth detail on every topic. This is the main reason that the author included detailed lists of reference material at the end of each chapter. The content that was included was presented in a very clear, easy to follow format. Plenty of configuration examples were provided as well as debug and show command output. One chapter that was well put together was Chapter 8. It did a good job describing the features of both OSPF and IS-IS. It covered the deployment and basic configurations of both protocols. It did not cover the advanced features of the protocols but it did include references to other books (that a CCIE candidate should already have) and links to CCO pages. I was kind of disappointed with the material in chapter 12. Multiservice is fairly new to the Qualification exam so I am assuming that is the reason for the lack of information. Most topics just had a paragraph or two providing a definition of the service. Hopefully this will be corrected in the next version of the book. The book provides different methods of testing you knowledge. There are questions throughout the book that allows you to tell if you grasping the content. A CD is provided what contains testing software that simulates taking an actual exam. I found the testing engine easy to use and the question clearly written. There is no "one book" that can provide everything that you need in order to pass the qualification exam. I feel that Bruno did a good job putting this book together. As long as the reader has the idea that this book is just a tool to aid in learning the material, the reader should be able to get a lot out of it. If the reader is looking for a "one book" solution, this book is not for them.
Rating:
Summary: A TON of errors
Review: Great Cisco! What in God's name were you guys drinking when editing this book? I'm on pg. 100 and I've counted at least 5 errors so far. And judging from the content I'm reading, it really doesn't seem like CCIE information but more like CCNP. Maybe they want to raise the failure-rate for the CCIE written exam by publishing this book....who knows. IMHO, this book should have been twice as thick for the amount of information required for the CCIE test.
Rating:
Summary: 3 1/2 Stars - needs a few updates.
Review: Having been working with Cisco and networking over the past several years I found the exams to quite challenging and very tough. Having worked with 2 CCIE's over the past couple years the CCIE exam would have to be the toughest exam of all, this training guide maybe a bright light at the end of the tunnel. What the author does in this book is create a prep guide of 70 plus pages for the written exam. His understanding of what it takes to pass the exam is what makes this book one of the best I have seen on the market today. To ensure you best shot at passing the exam each chapter has both a pre and post assessment test. Also the book has you working with over 15 scenarios and judging from the content it would appear that the scenarios were taken from real life situations. Covering the topics like the OSI model, number conversions, RIP, IGRP, EIRGP, OSPF, VLANs, BGP, MPLS, IS-IS, firewalls and NAT to name a few, you are given router screen shots and step by step instructions to help your learning experience. There is also a cd included with over 200 practice questions, so overall you have a very good tool. With a few grammar errors that need fixing this book should provide a great of help either for the exam or for the real world.
Rating: 
Summary: Way Under Expectation
Review: Hi,
I'm a CCNP and CCDA and I've always used CiscoPress Certifications books to prepare my exams.
I bought this book hoping that, as the others, it would give me all the elements to pass the test. Oh...if I was wrong.
Soon after starting reading it I realized that this book wasn't teaching anything. Each topic was just mentioned and not really unfold as the exam requires.
I wasted a week reading it and...you know what? At the end I studied on my CCNP books, integrating what was missing with documents on Cisco CCO. I passed the written test this morning at the first try.
Don't waste you money on this. Please
Rating:
Summary: Not a good resource for the test
Review: I am really surprised that this book is even passed off as a resouce to use by Cisco to pass the test. It touches on alot of things but only at a surface level. If you do pass the written it will not be because you read this book. Take my advice and the advice of others: save your money and spend it on the book by Rob Payne et al. This is somewhat of a shock and disappointment because I used Bruno's CCDA book to prepare for that test and it was an excellent resource.
Rating:
Summary: Not a One-Stop Shop
Review: I am reviewing the CCIE Routing and Switching Exam Certification Guide (ISBN 1587200538), which is the official preparation guide for the CCIE R&S exam from Cisco Press. The book weighs in at 688 pages, which is about right for a book of its type. The problem is that the type of book that it is doesn't really work for an exam like the CCIE. If we were talking about the CCNA or one of the single CCNP exams, I'd say "sure, you can get it all in one book", but not the CCIE. This book is a lot like reading a menu in that you get enough information to get you interested in a topic and decide if you need to learn more. The problem, however, is that in the case of the CCIE exam, you don't need a menu, you need a cookbook! The actual purpose of this book, as stated in the Foreword, is that it should act as a late-stage exam preparation tool to help you assess our strengths and weaknesses and focus your study. Basically, once you've gotten to that late stage, you've been reading for about six months and all this book does is breezes over all of the stuff that you've already learned. Occasionally, you might hit something you haven't read before and might take a moment to fill in that particular gap, but largely you feel like you're wasting your time. A book covering this wide a range of topics is easy to stall out on. If you feel like you're not getting anything out of your valuable reading time, you really have no motivation to keep going. I personally stopped this thing halfway through, read a book on poker and then came back to it.
I think a better approach to future editions of this book might be to rewrite it as a preliminary study tool for the CCIE. They could take each of the blueprint objectives and write a chapter which explains in detail what knowledge and experience you need to have in order to pass that objective. Readers could use the end-of-the-chapter assessments to make a judgment call on how much studying they need to do on that objective. Each chapter should also make suggestion of where the reader could go to get additional knowledge on the topics covered in that chapter. See, what I was missing early on in my CCIE studies was a "test prep quarterback" to point me in the right direction. I think this book would keep the reader's attention better if it was recommended as the first thing to do in the test prep process, not the last.
Okay, okay... I think I've dwelled on the negatives quite long enough. There are some things I really liked about this book. First off, since it's widely known that CCIE candidates can never get enough practice questions, it'll be no surprise that I liked having the practice exam on the CD. I also liked the Scenarios at the end of each chapter. They really made you think and try to apply what you've read. I'd like to see an entire book of them. I also found the authors style to be very readable. Anthony Bruno took the challenge of writing a book that covers the entire CCIE blueprint and got it all into 688 pages. That takes a very concise writing style, and he pulls it off.
In conclusion, I'd have to say that I'd recommend this book to others, but as a preliminary guide and not as a final exam prep tool. Someone coming in cold, or even coming off of the CCNP exams, would really benefit from this book as indoctrination into the level of study necessary to prepare for the CCIE. I'd warn them, however, that this book isn't meant to be used as a one-stop shop. You really must read other books and get a lot more information off of CCO in order to prepare properly for the CCIE.
I give this book a 3 on my 5 ping rating scale.
!!..!
Rating: 
Summary: Incomplete Material
Review: I bought this book in hopes of having an all in one resource for the CCIE written exam. This book barely touches the surface of some very important concepts for the CCIE written exam and is not enough for any real world task.
Another issue I have, is the author uses all the acronyms, but doesn't write them out. I have a great deal of experience in working with many of these technologies, so it's not such a big deal for me, but others may find this frustrating.
The CCNP level books (Routing, Switching) cover the technologies in much greater detail. The exam certification guide is extremely weak, and maybe good for a quick refresher prior to takeing the exam, or perhaps recertifying. Otherwise, I'd look for better material.
Rating:
Summary: Book covers for previous test versions!!
Review: I had no problem with the format of the book as a tool to review the information; however, the review all applies to an old version of the test. This book has little to no value as a tool to review the current version of the CCIE written examination. It was a major waste of money.
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