• Authored by CCIEs in collaboration with CCIE Program Managers.

• In-depth coverage of routing protocols provides both great practical knowledge and exam preparation.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 25 Ratings

A must read for CCIE lab candidates - 2005-10-15
Reviewer Rating:
This book is a very good source of information for setting up practice internet works for the CCIE hands on lab. I went into it as a possible study source for the written portion of the exam. I was able to glean some useful information from it but nothing I couldn't find in other books. It will definitely come in handy when I start setting up test equipment for the lab.

The material is presented in a very understandable format. I especially liked the fact that the practice labs were grouped by technology. Starting with the basics, in chapter one, it builds up steam as it progresses through the different technologies. Each chapter provides a background and a lot of helpful information on how to accomplish the lab scenario. There are also pertinent troubleshooting commands when things just don't go the way they should. After each lab scenario the author provides a walkthrough of how to accomplish the lab.

All this reading, lab setups and practice labs culminate in chapter 18. Chapter 18 is a series of labs that a CCIE candidate might face in the actual live CCIE lab. Each of the 5 labs goes over an equipment list, a pre-staging section then followed by the rules and the timed section. Answers are not provided for these labs but a link to a CiscoPress website is provided for you to check your work.

I compared these labs with other lab workbooks on the internet and found that there is not much difference between the lab scenarios. Whereas the workbooks have close to 30 labs they can cost up to several hundred dollars. The labs to be found in CCIE Practical Studies Vols I & II will cost you much less and most likely get you to the same level of competence to attempt the live CCIE lab.

While some of the material is dated, in reference to the current lab exam, it still is a helpful reference guide. Hopefully it will be updated to bring it more inline with the current exam and emerging technology, like the upcoming Routing TCP/IP book

An absolute Star outstanding - 2004-01-20
Reviewer Rating:
This is an outstanding book. In fact the part 2 is also a winner. The examples and the explanations are outstanding. This book and together with the part 2 is an art by itself . I think some of the materials are from Cisco website but yet the explanations are very down to earth and well written. I consider Jeff and Karl to be my Gurus and hope I will meet them some day.

"One of the books you will need" - 2003-09-05
Reviewer Rating:
Solie's book is a standard for CCIE prep. Like all technical books, this one is not perfect either, but they do publish corrections and do provide configuration solutions on ciscopress.com. Good practical information as well as some challenging labs. http://www.cciesecrets.net/ for more info on CCIE studies.

A great resource - but use with MUCH caution! - 2006-02-02
Reviewer Rating:
CiscoPress's "CCIE Practical Studies - Volume 1" by Solie is a difficult book to assess. On one hand, the book does an excellent job at covering half of the topics that you will see on the CCIE lab at the time of the book's printing. On the other hand, the book is riddled with errors. Every page, almost every config needs to be examined, reexamined and then, perhaps, discussed on GroupStudy to verify. It is hard to trust such a book but at the same time impossible to ignore.

Some of the typos/editorial mistakes are:
* Page 344 - For Cisco LMI " LMI status information is sent on DLCI 0." Not true - Cisco LMI is sent on 1023. And then the opposite with ANSI LMI right below Cisco LMI.
* Page 518 - 2nd paragraph - "...snapshot routing can be used only with link-state protocols..." Not true - snapshot routing is used only with distance-vector protocols (like RIP).
* Page 705 - 1st line - "For autosummarization to work properly, discontinuous subnets..." I believe the proper term is discontiguous.
* Page 776 - When discussing what must match for an OSPF neighbor relationship to form, the book is missing that the stub area flag and MTU must also match.
* Between 937 & 939 - completely ignore how they document NetBios and SNAP SAPs. This error is repeated throughout the book but can be verified on Cisco's website.

And so on... But have written this, I will be surprised if many CCIE candidates don't have this book on their shelf. Chapter 2, on LAN protocols is very good (and not document elsewhere). Also, the chapter on ISDN is both of use in the lab and a good tool to use in the real world.

I give this book 3 pings out of 5:
!!..!

OK book, but very lacking in detail... - 2003-12-05
Reviewer Rating:
I got my CCIE a few years ago, so when asked I reviewed this book at the request of co-workers for content and validity. I was not impressed, as there are too many errors and verbose language. The book is OK to use as a rough guide, but I suggest if you buy this book you better also look at buying a few other books to fill in all the gaps. I think this book can assist in Lab Preparation, but you will need so much more...

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