The book is the best one that Ive seen so far, I wanted to prepare for the BSCI exam and I decided to take this book because I made a research and I found out that this book was being very useful, that people that were using this book as a study reference got approved on their exams. The book covers everything and much more that you need to know to pass on the exam, it includes all the tips and the concepts that you need to master for the exam, Ive read it twice and practiced on simulatores, that was about my BSCI exam which I had 975/1000.

I bought this book because it is (so far) the only one available from Cisco Press. I thought I'd be able to get a head start on passing the exam. It's not worth it. Wait for the official guide due out in a few weeks.

The author of this book is very fond of the acronyms, which is maddening to someone trying to learn IS-IS. Terms are not always clearly defined before being used in context, which also gets very frustrating. The correct answers that you need to learn for the test are often clouded with real world technicalities. These technicalities are usually minute enough you'd never actually run across it in practice, and they confused my studying more than once. This book also doesn't have enough detail to get you through the new test and will need to be supplemented by other studying. Without any kind of practice test, you are far better off waiting for the official book. I wish I had.

Pretty concise and detailed, enough information in the book to pass the exam.
The lack of a CD is a big disadvantage for this book.

This book is a must to pass the Cisco BSCI exam. Since it is very detailed, use it with more concise books.

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It is not accurate for Cisco Press to deem this a self study guide as the labs provided (11 routers and a switch) are well beyond the means (or space) available for most people pursuing a self study option. It is also easier to gain a better understanding of IGP's from Routing TCP/IP Volume 1, which I has to do to supplement my studies. In hindsight I feel I should have waited for the BSCI Exam Guide to be published.

When it comes to training, I have experienced two distinct types. Instruction from a "Gunny" (Gunnery Sergeant USMC) will be effective and will help one to avoid making the trip home in a body bag. Instruction from a non-military academy trained Lieutenant will be professionally delivered and will cover a lot of theory that was acquired in a class or classes somewhere. The authors have done a great job of presenting theory and thus this book could be classified as a reference manual. However, one new to this material is apt to miss one or more of this book's "twists in the road" and end up destroying a tree. Buy this book for reference, but also invest in one that has a more hands on feel to it.

As with all Cisco press books, this book was about 25% too fluffy. Information you will NEVER need to know for the test, and will not help you with troubleshooting a problem... stuff that will only help you win the national "who's the biggest nerd" contest. Other than that, it is fantastic. The BGP section is great, with detailed troubleshooting information that could actually help you fix a BGP problem.

Get it, keep it, then end up Google-ing instead of using it... because, like me, you are too lazy to unbury the book from your office [insert location here]

This book was confusing. I have passed the BCMSN a few months back and a lot of that credit goes to a well written book. However I will be surprised if I pass the BSCI after reading this. The authors do not clearly explain things or even explain them in a logical order. In order to understand something I often times have to flip back and forth in the book.
The one good thing is the abundance of labs. She put a lot at the end of each chapter and that counts for a lot. However, it would have been nice to have the books formatted the same way Wendell Odom does.

To study for Cisco exams, I typically purchase a Cisco Press Exam Certification Guide vs. a Study Guide such as this book. The Exam Certification Guides tend to focus strictly on the exam vs. being a print version of the class, so they may be a bit more streamlined, have diagrams and tables to study, and include practice questions on a CD. However, when I needed to recertify my CCNP/CCDP in second quarter 2007, I chose to take the BSCI exam and the Exam Certification Guide was not yet shipping for exam 642-901. The only book available was this Teare/Paquet Study Guide (3rd edition). So I bought it and used it as the only study material for my BSCI exam. I passed, although it took me more than one attempt. I think the fact that I didn't pass on the first try is a reflection of the difficulty of the test vs. anything lacking in this book.

The material is well written and, as far as routing books go, an easy read. Lots of helpful sample router displays, including debugs so you can see how a process works. Being a third edition, most of the bugs have been worked out. I found very few typos.

The summaries at the end of each chapter are way too terse. They are typically less than a page in length and basically list the main topics of that chapter. When going back to review a chapter, you need to go through the chapter page by page rather than depending on the summary. Probably no big deal if you aren't using the book as an exam study guide. But for the exam, use a highlighter as you read so you can mark things to review/cram later. There are helpful "Key Points" listed from time to time in the chapters.

The review questions at the end of each chapter are pretty good. The format of the questions seems to change part way through the book - I'm guessing different authors wrote questions for different chapters.

There are also configuration exercises for each chapter. If you have access to a lab, you can use these exercises to configure and test the chapter material. If you don't have live equipment, you can still peruse the material to reinforce your learning. Router displays are included in the text.

The book has no CD, which means no portable electronic version of the book and no quiz software. You do have 45 day online access to an Internet version of the book, but it can't be downloaded to your hard drive. Since I spent my lunch hours studying away from my desk, and therefore away from Internet access, I ended up lugging an 800 page book in my laptop bag, carrying both the book and my laptop eight blocks a day between my parking lot and desk. After a month of this, I am two inches shorter.

But overall, I recommend this book for general reference and/or BSCI 642-901 exam study. For exam study, it might be nice to supplement the book with some testing software from another source when that becomes available.

Not so impressed so far and I'm 3/4 way through the book but won't know for sure until after the exam!

The book is thick and not having an electronic copy(CD) is a big negative. It doesn't allow you to print certain portion of the book to carry around with you and with the weight of the book, you pretty much have to read it on the desk. Overall, book is well written.

This is the new third edition of THE book on how to prepare for the Cisco BSCI exam that is part of the CCNP certification. It is updated to cover the changes in the examination, which come about largely because of changes in the networking environment and in the Cisco systems that support that environment.

The Cisco books are very well written, even for those who aren't interested in taking the exam, but who may have responsibility for the installation/maintenance of a large network. This has become an ever increasing task as internet protocol networks become converged to include voice and video traffic, mission-critical traffic such as stock market quotes, e-commerce traffic that must be kept secret, ever more complex routing systems with pipes of different carrying capacity.

As an exam preparation, the book includes study questions at the end of each chapter. And of course the book does do an excellent job of preparing for the test.