CCDA Exam Certification Guide, Second Edition



CCDA Exam Certification Guide, Second Edition

Reviewer Name: Steve Studsdahl, Network Engineer

Reviewer Certification: CCNP

Rating: **** out of *****

The CCDA Exam Certification Guide by Anthony Bruno and Jacqueline Kim (Cisco Press, ISBN: 158720067) is a book that will help toward achieving the CCDA (Cisco Certified Design Associate) certification, especially if the reader has some familiarity with implementing LAN/WAN technology.

Especially helpful in preparing for the CCDA are the “Do I know This Already?” quizzes at the beginning of each chapter. These quizzes helped me to determine how much time I required spending on the chapter. I found that for most of the technology specific areas (routing protocols, switching concepts, etc.) I was extremely strong. I still found it good practice to read through these chapters anyway. Initially I thought taking the CCDA exam would be a piece of cake based upon my experience in Cisco networking, but these initial quizzes proved that thought to be flawed when it came to a formalized design process.

Each chapter has a “Summary” section that provides a quick overview of the material discussed in the chapter. I found these to truly be a good summary of the chapters and I placed a bookmark at each of these summaries to be able to quickly locate them for a review prior to taking the CCDA exam.

At the end of each chapter, I found that the “Q&A” sections were useful to find out my retention of the information that I read. I especially liked the fact that some of these questions were in an essay format and not all multiple choice or true/false questions. This really forced me to understand the processes required for design.

One chapter that I particularly liked was the one on IPv6 basics. The explanation of this new protocol helped to clarify a lot of my thoughts on the protocol. It was presented in a way that took a lot of the fear of IPv6 away.

One of the sections that I struggled through was the first couple of chapters that were based upon the Cisco SAFE blueprint. I found that by going out to and reading through the SAFE blueprint helped me to get through these chapters with a much greater understanding of them.

The final chapter of the book dealt with “real world” scenarios. I especially liked the addition of this to the book as it provides an introduction to what a network designer would come across. This helped be able to gain an understanding of the questions that should be asked as a network design is developed as well as where the design proposal should address the design specifics.

The book comes with a CD-ROM with practice exams on it. I found the “Do I Know This Already?” quizzes to be very accurate and followed the book. When I went through the practice CCDA exam, I spent a lot of time going back and reviewing “incorrect” answers only to find that the practice exam had mistakenly flagged the answer as incorrect. There were a couple of times that providing the correct answers to the questions would match what the exam said was the correct answer, but they would be counted as incorrect. The practice CCDA exam appears to be related to Boson, as it requires registering the CD online in order to access the tests.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who has a couple years of practical experience implementing and maintaining a network. This book will definitely help the reader to achieve the CCDA certification and will remain on my bookshelf for future reference as I prepare new network designs.

Based on the format of this book, I will definitely purchase additional Cisco Press books authored by Anthony Bruno.

On a scale of 1 to 5, I would give this book a 4. Had the practice exam on the CD-ROM been better, I would have no problem giving this book a rating of 5 out of 5.

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