Cisco TCP/IP Routing Professional Reference

If you are looking for a book on TCP/IP and only TCP/IP this is not the book you need, but if you are working towards any Cisco Certification that this book is a must have. Completely breaking down TCP/IP and relating it to the CISCO IOS has this book getting the top rating.Lewis's expertise in the area of TCP/IP is what makes this book the handy reference you need by your side. The author is detailed, accurate and complete. While this book is not tailored to specific exam it will aid in any Cisco Certification you are planning to take.The is an abundance of figures, diagrams, actual router screen shots, tables, and router commands to give you the one go to reference manual. In just over 480 pages Lewis takes nothing for granted making sure you have the most up to date information right at your fingertips.The book covers IOS version 11 and 12 as well as a detailed breakdown of TCP/IP in a Cisco environment, WAN technologies, troubleshooting, VPN and firewalls. Overall an excellent book, however the one drawback maybe the price.

Chris is simply the best author. He gives you what you need to know. He teachs how and why things are done. I recommend this book to anyone serious about learning CISCO routers and IP routing.

The book is direct and to the point. It doesn't float over subjects, and give you the "I don't know to much about this, so I'll tell you what you already know" deal. It gets into what you WANT to find out about. Also specifies the little things you may not know, EVEN if you consider yourself an EXPERT. Please don't buy any book just to pass a test ! BUY it if you want to LEARN and USE !! SAY NO TO PAPER CERTS.

If you're new to IP routing, or just need to brush up, this is an excellent tool. It's not the only book you'll need, but it's one you shouldn't be without.

To have rate this book anything less than 5 stars would be grossly unfair. Chris Lewis has displayed a brilliance in his book seldom see in other authors, and only for very few times in my life have I experienced such inspirational writing. Chris use brilliant examples, and many of them, to illustrate how things work - or fail. Warn you about possible disaster like p.48 where you might have to physically replace all routers when hacker strike ( how, Chris? Give us hints. ), use a lot of SHOW commands and tell you what to pay attention to, point out important concept like "Frame Relay is a layer 2 protocol and does not understand the concept of network number" when other authors seem only eager to tell you the IOS command to setup a frame relay network, give useful suggestions and insightful knowledge that you can talk like a veteran WAN/CISCO engineer in front of customer, nice historical perpective like "RARP originally was designed for diskless workstation that has no place to store an IP address". When other author stopped after telling you the IOS command to setup IPX routing, Chris tell you " it is only now that the real works begins in order to get ipX routing work efficiently over variety of network media", and tell you SAP update is more of a concern that RIP updates - such insightful knowledge that can reduce hours of frustrated work. Thanks Chris, for this impressively brilliant book, and if writing one book did not scare you enough, can you please write at least a couple more. Drop me an email and I will buy it before the ink is dry.