Learn Cisco Network Administration in a Month of Lunches

Lots of good hands on teaching in the book if one is able to follow along with even a single cisco 2960 switch that i've been doing. Great book to dive into with the proper netwk gear.. its best though to have what they stated in the beginning of the book (layer 3 switch which is a cisco 35xx or 37xx model, i found that the hard way in the ip networking part where a cisco 2960 is only a layer 2 switch). I found i was able to do a lot of the beginning tasks (1st 100 or so pages) easily enough (creating vlan's, accessing the IOS via serial connection, getting familiar with the different modes (enable, configure terminal, etc) but need a layer 3 switch to do the ip addressing parts. But still I'm able to go thru a lot of the book. I feel like within the past month i got more exposure hands on with a cisco switch than the half year spent on network + books learning (thought the network + still is important since it covers a lot of the fundamentals in networking, it just didnt have to much hands on with the actual hardware like this book gives) Highly recommended if your trying to break into networking field and want some hands on experience as long as you can grab acisco switch/router to play with also at the same time your following thru this book.

Learn Cisco Network Administration in a Month by Ben Piper is the perfect guide to giving you a foundation in network administration. Understand that you will not be ready to test for your CCNA using this book alone but you'll have a solid foundation with plenty of hands-on practice. You'll need a study guide specific to the test after finishing this book in order to be assured of passing the test.There is a code in the front of the book that gives you access to an electronic version of the book. Thoughtful and very convenient - especially when working through the labs.You may need to spend some money setting up your lab if you don't already have the necessary equipment or cannot borrow it. There are quite a few options - some better than others - and they are fully outlined in Chapter 1 Before You Begin. This will take some time but there is no way around it. You cannot learn network administration without actually building and working with a real network.After that, the chapters, lessons and labs are very clear and straightforward and easy to follow. I am almost done with the book and I've learned a great deal. Even if I don't go on to get my CCNA, this is very helpful to me in managing my own home network. I recommend it highly for building foundational knowledge.

A very nice beginners book and a great way to dive into Cisco administration. The lessons should be read sequentially in order to properly get a solid foundation built. However, if you're already semi-familiar with Cisco products, picking and choosing your topics should work ok. I come more from a software administration side, so I understood most of the core networking concepts already. The illustrations/pictures are good, but to really get the lessons drilled in, you should have some hardware available to follow along and test for yourself. I'm not sure about being ready to administer a Cisco network in a month - maybe as a junior admin, but the book will give you a good foundation.

Before I read this book and other book on cisco subject, I have one primary objective is: I want to know about cisco technology and how to manage its product. I want to extend my knowledge in an existing network background, so I have to be one more step further to manage cisco switch/router.I know that some people learn cisco because of certification, job and earn back an income. They are not wrong, I appreciate their decision but for me, this is the second objective.This book give a solid foundation of knowledge to managed cisco switch. I love the way that author explain and demonstrate how to managed the switch and its feature especially everything mostly done with the command line. There are so many chapter within this book where an author tried to break its down to make this complex subject become easier for the reader to follow his lesson.Another good point is the summary section of the command use in this chapter which give me a very fast review to the lesson in case I need to work with my job. The first and last cover of the book also the command that are frequently use to manage cisco switch.I recommend that if you have a budget to invest, you should purchase the real product as mention in the book by an author to implement during your reading progress. I used cisco packet tracer to practice and I found that some command were limit and not available as shown in the book. By having the real product to practice, I guarantee that you would feel much more confident when you handle any project.One thing that I recommend to improve for this book, an author should include an appendix on how to setup the practice file for recommend hardware use in this book. How to import the configuration, customize some setting where made user feel more ready to begin since chapter one. That is the reason why I gave this book only 4 stars only.Thank,Kanel

I really admire the way the authors have managed to put together a book that doesn't assume that you have an extreme amount of knowledge in advance, and doesn't talk down to you at all as it explains how to do things like prepare your tools. I also particularly like the way this series has broken the material down to pieces that are in a very approachable size. It's a really solid place to start learning

Great book, easy to follow, and the author does a wonderful job of helping to explain everyday techniques and commands. Great for normal reference as well, especially if you only do networking part of the time.

I love this series. This is a great beginner book for day to day tasks. Look elsewhere for a certification material.