CCNA Official Exam Certification Library (CCNA Exam 640-802) (Exam Certification Guide)

These books are the best learning resources I've come across. After failing the 640-802 exam multiple times, I searched for a proper Cisco educational experience and found that these books delivered exactly what I was seeking. Prior to reading these books, I read Lammle's (Sybex) study guide and found it to be lacking the proper material coverage as well as being riddled with technical and grammatical errors. Odom's books offer much more detail and more importantly - Cisco's philosophy, which is a key and often overlooked component. I've since passed the exam and continue to use Odom's books; they're fantastic.

Excellent Book to Study From. I must say, I read (honestly) books from other venders (read: Sybex) and none of the books prepared me better for the exam than good ol' Wendel.

Wendel writes from the heart and he is honest when it comes to material covered in the exam, at times he goes at length in the book and you may wonder why he does, but in the long run (read: the exam) it all makes sense.

I regret not reading this book before I wasted my time readiing Sybex's Todd Lammle's book. Trust me. I passed the exam on the first try!

I'm weighing in here because I have to question the integrity of many of these "customer reviews". Take a good hard look at all the 5 star reviews and you will see a common thread - namely, they are not people looking to pass the CCNA. If you are like me, you have some working knowledge of networking and routing but much of the material will be new to you. You are not the Author's "Technical Reviewer" You are not a CCNA instructor. You are not someone who has read all the other author's books and came here to proclaim that he has "done it again." You are not a veteran of the industry who has nothing better to do than read 1200 pages of entry level material.

Here is how I describe this set. Get ready for hundreds of pages of this:

"Classful Routing: When a packet's destination only matches a router's default route, and does not match any other routes, only use the default route if this router does not know any routes in the classful network in which the destination IP address resides."

I hope my weighing in here helps because I think these other reviewers were here to help the author sell the book, not help you pass the CCNA.

I plan to take a CCNA course next semester at the local community college and bought this book due to its good reviews. I have had exposure to these technologies throughout some courses that I have been currently taking so the subject matter was not new, but I did learn additional things. The book explains concepts in a way that is easy to understand.
Highly recommended!

I read both of these books from front to back, while doing doing hands on practicing with Cisco gear. One thing I liked about these books is that I feel it gives you more than what you need to pass the exam, rather than the bare minimum. I did learn a good amount from reading these books, and I passed my CCNA the first time I took it earlier this week.

In order to pass the exam, I would recommend that you get hands on experience with Cisco routers and switches if possible. For those that don't have multiple routers at their disposal, GNS3 is a useful, free tool that allows you to test virtualized routers.

I've heard that the DVD that comes with the book has a good testing engine, although I didn't try it. I've been using the Transcenders practice exams for sometime, and I find them good because they seem harder than the actual exams.

I would definitely recommend these books. Good luck to you in your studies.