Network Warrior

List Price: $44.99 Discount Price: $26.39

Customer Reviews:

What a great book [Posted on 2008-06-03]
I loved three things about this book:

1- The simple style it conveys from cover to cover. Every subject in network administration is divided into short but detailed chapters in order to keep the reader's attention focused. Anyone can write a book that lists an experienced user's knowledge of the subject, but it takes a real engineer to compile the data in small doses of knowledge.

2- The clarity of the information mentioned. The author uses the same style of defining the problem, suggesting the best solution, and detailing the technical commands to implement the best solution.
Common pitfalls, problem symptoms, and real life examples are provided as well.

3- The deep coverage of the subject at hand. The author goes over almost every subject in network administration, but without the extra fluff. It's really what you need to know.

Definitely a great buy.

Great Cisco networking book. Every sys admin should have it. [Posted on 2008-07-14]
This is a great book on Cisco networking, so just buy it now. I've tried reading the CCNA prep books before but never got around to finishing them because they got into too much detail and I wasn't working with Cisco products enough to get hands-on experience.

At my current job I'm more involved in networking, so when I saw this book, I thought I'd give it a shot. So far it's been very helpful. This book is strictly practical in nature, so you won't get a lot of detail on Ethernet framing or the OSI model. (Note to author, it would be helpful in the second edition to include one concise chapter on the OSI model and network protocols as a refresher.)

If you have a certification such as MCSA, MCSE, Network+, or CCNA, you will have all the background info you need before reading this book. If you have no networking knowledge at all, this book is not for you.

I've been skipping around reading different chapters (this is the kind of book where you can do that). This is one of the few IT book that I've read that actually gave me practical info that I could put to use right away. Here are two examples:

1.) From Ch 2 regarding auto-negotiation: In June 2008 we moved to a new office that had all new gigabit Cisco switches that replaced our 10/100 switches. A few weeks after our move we started getting reports of errors when saving files to our EMC Celerra NAS. Users would get errors saving files to the NAS and their computers' system logs would report a "Delayed Write Failed" error.

Source: MRxSmb
EventID:50
{Delayed Write Failed} Windows was unable to save all the data for the file \Device\LanmanRedirector
The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this file elsewhere.

This looked to be a network issue so when I was poking around the Celerra Manager I noticed that its NICs were hard coded to 100 full duplex. Since we were on gigabit switches that were set to auto-negotiate, I deduced (from the knowledge gained in this chapter) that the EMC devices should be set to auto-negotiate as well. So after contacting EMC and then changing the EMC NICs to auto-negotiate, we've had no more reports of these errors.

2.) From Ch 9 regarding routing: I ran into an issue with improper configuration of the gateway of last resort during our office move. For whatever reason, the gateway of last resort was not configured on our new VLANs. We noticed the problem because we couldn't get to the Internet, but we could get to our other offices. When our network support vendor walked my manager through running the sho ip route command, I immediately saw "gateway of last resort is not set" at the top and knew that it was the issue. So even though I had only been reading this book for two weeks, it paid off. I'm sure the vendor would have found the issue after a few more minutes, but it was nice to be able to point out the issue to them.

Best Networking Book Period [Posted on 2008-08-05]
I am a network engineer, pretty new at it though. This book is my constant companion. I have had more questions answered from this book than from any 2 other sources combined. I travel alot for business and at 2am its hard to find someone to answer my questions. This thing hits the spot.

Must have for new CCNAs [Posted on 2008-08-14]
Just as the book claims - the book has on the job information essential for the new network administrator that can pass the CCNA but lacks experience in the field. While the CCNAs main focus is routing and switching on small networks, this book covers the knowledge gaps in supporting the campus network in areas including the firewall, multi layer switching, SVI's, HSRP, QoS/CoS, supporting VOIP and so on. What was immediately beneficial was the anecdotal chapters on GAD's maxims and chapter 38 titled "avoiding frustration" where the very common problems with "IT politics" always mess with the "perfect design" and the engineers ego. This book, will take your knowledge to the next step after the CCNA and get you set on a path towards supporting larger networks in the "real world" and eventually going after the CCNP. This book is on the top shelf in my library.

Simpy a must have [Posted on 2008-09-05]
Another O'Reilly masterpiece. A must have for techs moving into the Cisco world. A lot a real world knowledge that will fill in the gaps left my many of the standard training texts. If you want to give a new CCNA something as a gift this is it.

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