Although outdated in some areas (minimal) this book is great! We use it for our Networking Essentials class. One of the advantages of this book is that is is cross-platform. The terms apply to networks and technologies irrelevant of the vendor or operating system. The case studies and the projects provide a great opportunity for developing hands on experience in each of the chapters. I highly recommend this book since it complements very well the Cisco Academy Semesters 1-2 Book!!

Great book and explains all elements of LAN and WANs fully. Good diagrams to illustrate network topography. Authors have done great work putting together such a great book. Highly recommended.

This book was required reading for a class that I recently completed. The title seems a little misleading, as I had very little networking experience prior to taking this class, and considered all but two chapters as introductory. Despite errors in some of the diagrams (DCE and PAD mislabelled on p. 73, missing EIFO hub on p. 135 and missing CSU/DSU on p. 139), this book was an excellent read (Had these diagrams been correct, I would have rated this book five stars!). Overall, a solid foundation of topologies, protocols, network design, security and troubleshooting. The end result of this book was an A is the course and a strong interest in persuing network certifications (MCSE+I, CNE, CCIE). A must read for anyone wishing to gain an understanding of networking concepts.