Slashdot Mirror
Cisco Networking Simplified
This book is clearly written for two types of people: executives from a non-technical background who get flustered when speaking to network engineers, and networking novices looking for a friendly introduction to the subject before they begin serious study for, say, the CCNA.
When I first opened Cisco Networking Simplified, I was a bit put off by the intensity with which I felt the authors and illustrator were trying to convince me just how down-to-earth they are. The organization of the book is such that it's so easy to flip through, the pithy explanations so easy to digest, that one might grow quickly suspicious that here is a book designed more to make the reader feel at ease than to actually teach her anything.
But one would be wrong. CNS is a good basic reference book. It's short because it sticks to the essentials. It's weirdly-inked illustrations do make the concepts clearer. And the friendly tone never gets smarmy. On the contrary, Maggiora and Doherty anticipate a newcomer's reaction to the material well enough to know when to be terse, and when to insert whimsical asides. The unofficial eighth (political) and ninth (technical religion) layers of the OSI model and the use of ISDN to mean It Still Does Nothing are fun tidbits, well-placed, and perhaps even useful as mnemonic devices. The paragraph explaining that "routers switch and switches route," is appropriately illustrated with two people scratching their heads. That the authors make room for "Algorhyme," Radia Perlman's poem describing the Spanning Tree Algorithm (which she also wrote), shows that they know the difference between cute and distracting, and cute and relevant.
There are some problems, though. For example, the discussion of classful addresses is outdated. The class A, B, and C system is presented as the solution to a problem caused by unanticipated Internet growth. That may have once been true, but now the time when the class system was itself perceived as the next wave of that problem has already come and gone (gone, because outside isolated or masqueraded networks, class addressing has been replaced with CIDR). An executive who reads this book and then asks his engineers whether the company has been assigned a class A, B, or C address isn't going to get a lot of respect. A more serious problem is the confusing definition of the term DCE. On page 209, it's "data circuit-terminating device." On page 210, it's "data communications equipment." The first definition is more popular according to a google search, but makes less sense (where does the "E" come from?). Perhaps both definitions are somehow valid, but in a book like this, it shouldn't be the reader's job to figure out which one. And ISDN gets two detailed pages with illustrations, while the more popular (in the U.S.) DSL gets little more than a paragraph.
Also, to call this book Cisco Networking Simplified is not really accurate. A better title might have been: Cisco Presents: Networking Simplified. Cisco has no special claim to, say, IP addressing, which is discussed in some detail. Of course, to write a basic networking book without discussing IP would be silly, and Cisco makes a lot of products that deal with IP addressing. But so do a lot of other companies.
In short, I recommend this book (three of five stars), but with caveats. Technically-minded people who already have some experience in the networking field will probably be put off by the coloring book look-and-feel (but then, it wasn't written for them). Novices who are reading this book as the first step on their way to certification may find that, ironically, it provides much more information on certain subjects (voice over IP, for example) than may be sought. It's hard to imagine anyone reading this book straight through of their own volition: it's a beginner's reference. If you're confused by a topic as it's dealt with in another networking book, you can be fairly sure that if CNS covers that topic, then it contains the simplest explanation of that topic that you're likely to find.
You can purchase Cisco Networking Simplified from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
back a few years ago when I was a complete noob, I read "Networking for Dummies". Pretty good read, and taught me all I needed to get me started. Maybe this is one I can recomend to my noob friends.
Pretty Pictures!
If you liked our "Cisco Networking Simplified" book, be sure to look for these other titles:
"Learn Brain Surgery in 21 Days"
"Quantum Mechanics in a Nutshell"
"String Theory for Dummies"
The review talks a lot about the basic networking explained in the book, but does it go into specifics with regards to CISCO gear? I'd think that would be as important for someone considering a CCNA cert.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
...to both Slashdot and Amazon. Threw me for a second when I started reading Amazon reviews. Isn't that illegal on Slashdot?
What does it mean to wake out of a dream
and be wearing someone else's shorts?
BNL, Born on a Pirate Ship (1998)
Buy Linksys.
Chapter 9 - security
Any 3.1 stuff I did was all IPX. IP was just bolted on IIRC.
Trolling is a art,
if they spend a few chapters talking about "IDSN"...
sig:- (wit >= sarcasm)
Why not just get everything for free at http://www.gdd.net ?
Looks like I'll get the book for my children so I can have meaningful discussions with them regarding IP addressing and routing at home. At least the layout will appeal to them...
What exactly do you mean by "Don't touch this button?"
I see reuse and avoiding the common all-too-common hubris of wanting to reinvent the wheel.
I'd hire him over you.
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
DCE means Digital Communication Equipement. The DCE need to communicate with a DTE which stands for Digital Terminal Equipement (which is basically only a synchronising process between 2 routers or CSU/DSU or also frame relay. Nothing too fancy there.
Here's a good all-around book that I've had for at least 8 years.
"Understanding Data Communications (7th Edition) by Gilbert Held.
It's good at explaining a lot of things, right down to decoding packet headers for various things. If you don't need that kind of detail, it's still a great book for the uninitiated. fitting it into the real world. I've got a dog-eared second edition that I've loaned to a number of people through the years.
Cisco has been good at training materials for quite some time. I sat through every Cisco class offered they had in 1995. The training materials were very good.
-- No sig for you!
except it doesn't require a Ph.D. or M.D. to credibly practice cisco router and switch configuring. Get over yourselves, any monkey with a book can do it.
Correct. I did it when I was about 20 to pay for college.
Seems to me CCNA always meant "I know my way around a cisco router, kind of", and did not at all mean "I am an internetworking expert"... that's what CCIE is for.
Routergod is a great source for networking information.
Experts such as Charles Manson explaining static routes. Don King explaining IP access lists and Denise Richards on the PIX Firewall. Those celebs really know their stuff.
I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people. - Jack Handey
I was thinking about this the other day. Then it occured to me that in Jazz music there are no female trumpet players. Women can not play the trumpet.
the crap on classfull addressing (class a, b, c networks) is probably in the book because it is on the ccne and ccna tests. At least it still was when I took the ccne test a few years ago
Global Document Database
I receive a lot of "junk mail" from Cisco and received an offer for this book free of charge. I threw it away, looks like I should have used it and take advantage of the book.
Unfortunately, some shit was posted by him yesterday.
All those hundreds of years of books using 'he' as an article! For SHAME!
Blar.
One step closer to the Dummification of the I.T. Field. Still waiting for the Cisco Virtual Private Networking for Dummies, myself. The sad thing is then and only then maybe my company will get their stuff working properly.
This book costs $2 more at Amazon. Spend $4.01 more to get free shipping.
For more reviews of this book and other information, check out my new site: VeryGeekyBooks.com.
y esa "review" esta duplicada.
Viva Amazon , abajo b&n , es basura
Those interested in Algorhyme can find it in the abstract to Perlman's paper on spanning trees
actually, i bought a book called Quantum mechanics for beginners. lots and lots of illustrations, but i just couldn't get past one third of it.
i asked a friend of mine who is actually doing his doctors thesis on QM, and he didn't think so highly of it; not cause it was a 'for beginners' book, but cause it overly complicated issues, and brought up subjects which were only confusing.
i took some comfort in that.
f64 : making rich excuses for being poor
LO PEOR QUE HAY
... a book called Cisco Networking Simplified, you probably shouldn't be doing networking that you need to use Cisco products for.
They seem to only have 9 copies to give away. I jumped on the same offer and 3 months later, got a postcard saying "Sorry, we ran out!"
heh
Why do you assume it will be a female?
It's just a modern convention of writing. For hundreds of years if you were referring to a generic human you referred to this person as a "he". This started changing somewhere in the 90s when writers of just about every genre, and whether the author was male or female, began defaulting to "she" instead of "he" to mean "generic person".
Sort of like the Barbie doll of the 80s who exclaimed "I don't like math!" when you pulled her string, the predominating view in modern social science is that the reason you end up with very male dominated fields (like Cisco networking or IT in general) is that women are socialized to believe that these things "aren't for girls". When you start writing books that use "she" as the generic, and you start putting out more books for kids featuring women as astronauts or scientists or mathematicians we will have the enourmous benefit of a society that does not value women primarily as mere Vicoria's Secret fashion victims.
Not that women shouldn't be valued for their beauty. But if all someone is contributing to society is how they look in high-heels it's a lose-lose situation for both the society and the woman brainwashed into believing that all that really matters is her appearance.
Quod scripsi, scripsi.
I almost never touch routers in the real world and I still passed the CCNA pretty easily.
Are you the kid who screwed the network up at ______ machine and tool last weekend?
If so, thanks. I made $600 in 2 hours straightening that all out!
When you start writing books that use "she" as the generic, and you start putting out more books for kids featuring women as astronauts or scientists or mathematicians we will have the enourmous benefit of a society that does not value women primarily as mere Vicoria's Secret fashion victims.
That's right. What we really want is victoria's secret models that can configure our cisco routers and cook hot grits! Then you'd be cooking!
i got your free book. ccie practical shaight.
It is rather annoying, isn't it? Seeing 'she' in the context of O'Reilly guides and engineering texts always trips me up a bit; I begin to cringingly imagine the writer congratulating herself (and now I've done it too!) for the great blow she's struck for gender equity, or whatever.
But picking 'he' or 'she', and alternating in the name of political correctness, is infinitely better than the disgusting 'he or she'. Unfortunately, I'm not a big fan of your singular 'they' either, as it tends to cause confusion and frequently violates parallelism - your example sentence just sounds wrong to me.
And let's not even get into those fake-o-la neutral pronouns. Ou? Thon? HERM? That's just silly.
eikimartinson.com
BTW that doesn't necessarily apply for other human languages. There are languages that allow you to refer to a generic human using the same word whether male or female or whatever.
;).
Mandarin - "Tha"
Malay - Dia
Japanese - ka re till about 100 years ago when it got corrupted by English or some other language
What's 'e talking about 'ere? :)
Goes well with Hokkien too - where "ee" means about the same thing.