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Professor Creates His Own Cisco Manual

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the a-manual-manual dept.

yootje writes "ZDnet is running a story about a professor who made his own Cisco networking textbook, with 800 pages: "Computing instructor Matt Basham's suggestions for improving Cisco Systems' official training manuals fell on deaf ears for years. But he appears to have the networking giant's attention now." The professor made his book available for free on his website."

8 of 318 comments (clear)

  1. This should happen more often by slusich · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's great to hear a story about someone who took it upon himself to do what was needed. Cisco was obviously not responsive to him, so he goes out and does it on his own. Not only that, he decides to share his work with everyone. Now hopefully Cisco has the common sense not to sue him for his efforts.

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    1. Re:This should happen more often by Short+Circuit · · Score: 4, Interesting

      How about republishing Cisco's API without their permission? Cisco probably likes the revenues they get from selling their docs and their training manual.

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    2. Re:This should happen more often by amaffew · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Thanks guys...I am not a lawyer but have spent several years studying copyright and internet law...I even got the opportunity to lead a session at Harvard Law School one summer. Heck, one of the professors there, Johnathon Zittrain, even downloaded the book...he's an old-school chat room moderator turned internet lawyer...he and his colleagues have even taking pro-bono work to fight for open source rights. I think I have sufficiently covered my assets with respect to the book...it has actually been out for three years and I haven't heard anything so far. Besides I put some really specific phrases in there that help cast aside their chances. Thanks again. I will go out and read all the posts too. You should see the one on www.macpro.se that appeared in swedish! Gratis lärobok för Ciscos kurser Thanks again Matt PS if you download the book shoot me an email and let me know where you are located...I am keeping track on a map. Bashamm@spcollege.edu

  2. Eeeeek... by Noryungi · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's a 5.1MB Microsoft Word file.

    Oh the horror... The horror...

    Please, Mr Matt Basham, release this as a PDF, RTF or HTML file... Anything but Word. I ma willing to help if needed.

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  3. Still Wondering by swordboy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm still wondering why the governments don't require free and "open source" text for public schools. In college, the professors used to change the text every semester so that the students couldn't sell the books back at the end of the semester (likely getting kick-backs from the text manufacturers, no doubt).

    If just one state would sit down and even purchase some good works and make them freely available for modification and distribution, then the cost of education would be greatly reduced. Profs would be free to make changes at it fits their style so long as those changes are re-posted to the public. Students could read the texts online and/or print them.

    What am I not seeing here?

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  4. finally by falkryn · · Score: 4, Interesting

    good to see somebody doing this. I took the first semester Cisco course at my college, and yeah, the books weren't all that good. I haven't seen his work yet, but I do recall the first semester is exclusively going over the seven layers of the OSI model in sometimes painful detail. Can tend to throw the beginning student off, especially considering the OSI model is not much more than an academic tool anyway, TCP/IP is were its at in the 'real world'.

  5. Bad Self Publishing by RoscoeChicken · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Self-published textbooks will only work when some sort of feedback mechanism is in place to offer an indication of the quality of the book.


    For years, at the University of South Florida in Tampa, the engineering college subjected undergraduates to an extremely poor thermodynamics text self-published by an influential department chair until the thermo scores started to slide on the state EIT exams.

  6. This isn't a new thing....is it? by homerskid · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've been doing this same thing for years now....guess I just never thought to put it up on /. :-)
    Several years ago, when I was studying for my certs, I decided to compile all my material into a book.
    It has since grown into two separate books, one for the CCNA and one for the CCIE.
    While they used to be free, I decided to begin charging a small fee (10 bux), but only enough to cover the costs of my website -- incidentally, I've never really been able to recoup that.

    If anyone is interested, the books, along with loads of free material are available (both online and downloadable) at gdd.net.
    Please note that I do like for folks to register, but it is free and rather painless ;-).