Cisco Access Lists Field Guide

When configuring Cisco routers, you can take one of two approaches. If you're keen on expending a lot of time and energy, you can distill the contents of Cisco documentation into real-life access lists that make the routers do what your organization needs. Or you can open up the Cisco Access Lists Field Guide and see what solutions authors Gil Held and Kent Hundley have created for you. They've compiled a sort of recipe book, in which they present problems that access lists can solve, then provide a listing of an access list that solves the stated problem. Though it would be better if the solutions appeared on a CD-ROM or on the Internet somewhere, this book is nonetheless extraordinarily valuable to people involved in configuring Cisco routing equipment.

This book is more than a straightforward listing of problems and solutions. Held and Hundley make the Cisco Access Lists Field Guide something of a tutorial in two ways. First, a couple of introductory chapters explain the fundamentals of access lists, including how they fit into the larger router architecture and how they're maintained. Second, the authors present their listings in conjunction with lots of high-quality commentary. They'll state their problem in detail, then list the solution, then (most valuably) call attention to individual lines in the access list and explain what they're for. This material makes this book valuable to those technicians interested in learning for the long term, not just solving problems in the immediate context. --David Wall

Topics covered: Access lists for Cisco routers, organized by the functions they perform. There's coverage of time-based access lists, dynamic access lists, reflexive access lists, context-based access control, address translation, and security functions (including those defined by IPSec).