Although this book has been around for a long time now, we need to evaluate it from a professional point of view. Being a best-seller for a long time is certainly and indicator of the well-being of this book.

This book was released in February, 2005 to provide a self-study guide for the Cisco CCNA exam 640-801. The author, Todd Lammle, is well known for his experience in computer networks. He is president of GlobalNet Systems, a network integration and training firm based in Colorado, USA.

Lammle presents the materials in a very simple and attracting method that keeps the students focused and willing for more. Dropping a joke every now and then will break the ice and keep the reader fresh and drawn into the book.

The book comes in 11 chapters along with one appendix. The following table shows the chapters? titles:

And the appendix concludes the book with a list of all commands used in it.

The way I see it, the first two chapters, provide a simplified, yet comprehensive, introduction to the world of networks and the OSI model. And the idea of gathering IP subnetting along with VLSM in the same chapter is better than introducing them separately, as in the Cisco Academy materials. And the third chapter, coming with lots of solved and not-solved questions, is considered a good tutorial to subnetting not only to CCNA seekers but to all people needing subnetting in their work.

The chapters talking about routing are good and easy to follow. But they lack some details about the protocols that are not of big significance in the exam but might be needed in the real life (for example; changing the metrics of routing protocols).

The explanation of switches is good too but with probably excessive importance given to the 1900 switch.

Chapter 9 gives good details about password recovery and Telnet usage but lacks the good coverage of CDP protocol and this is not so good. CDP is important both in the exam and the real life. As much as I am concerned, CDP has solved lots of problems for me during my work.

Access lists are well explained with a good amount of exercises in chapter 10. And access-lists, being an important application of routers, is very important topic in the exam. And access-lists formulate a basic necessary knowledge for the security track and the CCSP later on. And now with the CCNP having topics in security, access-lists gain more and more importance.

The last chapter discusses WAN technologies, perhaps, in a too-brief manner. I believe that WAN technologies should be discussed in more details and more topics, such as DSL, should have been discussed too. The comprehensive and deep explanation of Frame-Relay in the book should have been followed by such an explanation of ISDN and DDR.

The biggest drawback in this book, as I see it, is the less-than-one-page explanation of NAT and PAT. NAT and PAT are very important topics in the exam as well as in the real life of a network administrator. No clues about their implementation are there in the book. Also another big topic missed in the book is DHCP. No detailed explanation of the protocol itself or its configuration. These two missing topics, NAT and DHCP, are probably the biggest two misses in the book.

As an overall, the book is good. But regarding the missing topics, I do not see the book adequate for preparation for CCNA exam by itself. You will need to go through the missing topics.

The full information about the book is:

CCNA: Cisco Certified Network Associate Study Guide: Exam 640-801, 5th Edition

Todd Lammle 

ISBN: 978-0-7821-4391-1

Paperback

720 pages

February 2005

And can be found here. 

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