The Cisco CCNP Certification Library is a set of four technically-correct books written as course materials. They all have the same strengths and weaknesses: they're technologically accurate and make passing the exam a no-brainer, but the dense, no-frills nature of the writing means that every sentence must be read thoroughly and completely to guarantee your CCNP.First of all, the good points: By and large, these books are highly accurate and reasonably error-free, which is not at all surprising, since these are official course guides straight from Cisco's mouth. They get their facts across directly and succinctly, and are unlike most other certification books in that they're all deeply concerned with teaching you how to do your job properly. They're packed with on-the-job examples, and the experience shines through when it comes to teaching you the important bits, for not only do they show you the "how" and the "why," but quite often they also show you the "where"--how each technology and protocol fits into the larger picture.
The writing, unfortunately, is much the same from book to book--they're all extremely textbooky, as if each book was written by Joe Friday from Dragnet. There isn't a wasted sentence to be found here; every word counts, making the information-to-text ratio higher than almost any other certification book you're likely to find on the market. Skim a page of a topic that you think you already know, and you may miss two or three important smaller points that become quite important in later chapters. If you're used to chattier books like Sybex or Macmillan, the lack of handholding can be abrupt and startling.
The information density and real-world experience comes at a cost: Although the end goal of every test-taker is ultimately to put that experience to work on a live system, every CCNP wannabe has to get over the hurdle of taking the exam--and none of the books are true exam practice. Admittedly, each of them gives you tons of useful knowledge, but there are a lot of meanderings where they go into detail on something that never gets tested. Furthermore, they don't tell you that these are rarely-tested topics, so you may spend a lot of time struggling with some abstract concept that never comes up on the exam, and ignoring a subject that almost always is on the exam.
Moreover, the questions at the end of each chapter are essay-style, not multiple-choice. Cisco has made it quite clear what their teaching objectives are: If you know the material well enough, says Cisco, you don't need us to tell you what's on the exam--you'll know. As such, each book has to be read and thoroughly understood in its entirety in order to guarantee a passing score. This means that if you're willing to devote the time and effort, you'll pass without a hitch--exam slackers can look elsewhere.
The books themselves are remarkably consistent, and pleasantly free from the "two good books and a crappy one" syndrome so common in large, expensive boxed sets. Each book pulls its own weight, although the CCNP Routing Guide--even though it's the thickest and deals with some of the toughest concepts--is probably the weakest in the set, since some of the writing is obtuse even by Cisco's standards and may confuse those not intimately familiar with routing concepts. On the other hand, the CCNP Support guide is sterling by anyone's standards and is even a useful read for non-CCNP candidates, as it hands out real-world troubleshooting advice by the barrelful.
In short, this set isn't an easy read--not even close. It isn't for those who barely passed their CCNA or people who don't routinely work with networks. But it is astoundingly comprehensive and error-free by certification guide standards, and the effort you put into grinding through here will be richly rewarded by a high passing score and a good foundation of CCNP concepts that will set you up for an excellent job--and perhaps even your CCIE. Highly recommended. --William Steinmetz
Price: $149.95
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