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Title: CCNP(TM) Remote Access Study Guide (Exam 640-505) by Syngress Media ISBN: 0-07-211908-X Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media Pub. Date: 12 June, 2000 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $49.99

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Average Customer Rating: 3.53 (17 reviews)

Rating: 4
Summary: The good, bad, and the summary.
Comment: The good: lots of good information on complex topics. I've read this book cover to cover and feel ALMOST ready to take the exam. The 2 minute drills offer a good review of each chapter, and the 20 questions after each chapter are also excellent. The bad: The editor of this book should be shot! There are many, many errors all over this book. Some errors are so bad its funny. Example: Chapter 13 is titled - Intro to troubleshooting Remote Access Networks. Yet this chapter has nothing to do with it. Chapter 13 is all about Network Address Translation! Also the diagrams and schematics are all misslabeled with wrong router numbers, ip addresses, ect... Also, some of the material on the actual Cisco Remote Access test is not covered in the book. Example: On Cisco's web site, Voice over IP is stated as one of the areas covered in the Remote Access exam -- but it is nowhere to be found in the book. The Summary: I gave this book 4 stars because it is a valuable resource, and I did learn a lot from the 35+ hours I spent reading it. The writing style is a bit dry, and there are quite a few errors. But over all, if you stick with it, you can learn a lot from this book.

Rating: 4
Summary: Quite good
Comment: I have spent more than 4 months with this book but is not even half ready for the exam. Like other Syngress's Cisco certification title, this book is a solid, systematic work that will help tremendously towards the exam, but I suspect that having more than one authors rushing for the dateline spoils the work a little bit. For example, the chapter 3 author talks at length on chat-script, then the chapter 4 author repeat some of the chat-script discussion. Such lack of coordination, I believe, is the reason why I have to cross check many topics in chapter 3,4,5 to gain a better understanding of each - which probably add 100 hours or so to my study time. Then, in chapter 7 and 9 ISDN, DDR is given good treatment - but in between there is a damn tough chapter on ISDN that appears to be more for people working for telco than LAN/WAN guy - I seriously doubt if chapter 8 is mean for the 640-505 exam. Later chapters on NAT, TACAS, RADIUS, Compression, all exhibit sign that the authors has very solid knowledge on the topic - but just not have enough time to write clearer. The result is a book with some brilliant teaching mix with intermittent patches of dull and tough "cut and paste" style lifeless writing. The result is you and I probably have to spend twice the time to understand their writing. Also I think it is true that VoIP is an exam objective but is not covered in this book. Well, I have not much choice really since this part of the world still have no seen any other title that is meant for CCNP 2.0 exam, so I have to stick to this for another couple of months. Not bad - but can be much better. I will definitely be looking for a second source that hopefully will still be useful after the exam - Bill Burton's work is tempting but does not met exam objective, Mcgraw-Hill's II Thomas M.Thomas probably won't be considered, Sybex's Lammle probably won't last more than 10 minutes of scrutiny in the bookshop - hopefully Exam Cram or Prep has some better stuff to show - they seldom, but recently Richard Deal and Sean Odon all have written good book on Switching.

Rating: 3
Summary: Too many errors
Comment: I read this book and passed the test on the first try, but half of the questions on the test weren't even covered in this book. That along with the ridiculous amount of grammatical errors in this book made it the last one from this publisher that I will buy.

Bottom line: You can pass the test with this book if you know all the information in it, but your passing score will be barely passing.