Mike Meyers' CCNA (TM) Exam Passport (Exam 640-507)

Mike Meyers' CCNA Exam Passport is the sort of book you buy when you're studying for the Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) certification even though you feel like you learned everything you need to know at work. It'll help you solidify your knowledge in your areas of experience, and fill the gaps in your knowledge--provided they're not too big. You'll be disappointed if you're expecting to learn the entire CCNA knowledge base from this book--or any other--but then you deserve to be. This book, like the CCNA itself, is for experienced professionals for whom the CCNA exam is a proof of competency, not a goal unto itself.

The travel motif that permeates this book's design frequently seems cutesy and forced--explanations of terms appear in "Local Lingo" boxes; potential pitfalls are marked as "Travel Advisories"--but the information provided stands up under scrutiny. Myers has condensed the CCNA syllabus to its essence and organized it thoughtfully, and as a result he's provided his readers with a useful test-preparation tool. His listings of IOS input and output, combined with simple and uncluttered "hockey puck" diagrams that illustrate network configurations, get right to the point. --David Wall

Topics covered: The subjects Cisco Certified Network Associates are expected to understand, which include the fundamentals of Cisco's Internetwork Operating System (IOS) and the effects of its commands on 1900-series (and similar) routers. Other sections deal with addressing and routing protocols, and with how to configure local- and wide-area networks (LANs and WANs) on Cisco gear.