Tech Books

[Seittit]

Packing up for the big move, and I'm driven down memory lane.

What tech book sticks out as your favorite? What was the worst?

My favorite: Ends-to-End QoS (2014 edition)
My worst: MPLS Fundamentals, Luc De Ghein


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[wintermute000]

You've gotta be kidding. Mpls fundamentals is wicked!!!!
Worst? CCNP security OCG for IPS.

[deanwebb]

Worst, by far, was the CCNP SECURE Official Course Guide. That is the single worst tech book I have come across since I started in IT in 1995.

Best? I love both Wendell Odom and Keith Barker as authors. But I've also read stuff from the Winternals guys, Bryce Cogswell and Mark Russinovich, and they were the biggity bomb when I was a late-90s sysadmin. When I did web design, Lynda.com guides were a real treat. This is another one of those times when I am asked for one and I come up with a top ten list that has 20 entries...

If I went with recent reads, though, I'd tip my hat at the CCDA guide, since it touches on everything. It's like a gateway to all the specialties of networking.

[Seittit]

Oh I forgot about the CCNP SECURE book! So many mistakes within that book!

As for MPLS Fundamentals, I'll just copy/pasta my Goodreads review. That book was ATROCIOUS.

The title "Fundamentals" is slightly misleading; spending over 75 pages on MPLS Traffic Engineering should validate my point.

Semantics aside, this has been my least favorite Cisco Press publication, dethroning the equally atrocious CCNP Secure Exam Guide. Simple, proper sentence structure seems to be a little too much to ask of Luc De Ghein and the editorial staff at Cisco Press. There are too many fragmented sentences and the use of commas has been more abused than Tina Turner.

Also missing is a congruent network topology throughout the book, each section has a new example that takes time for my simple brain to process.

In short, grammatical errors and general poor composition riddle this thorough book, making it impossible to fall in love with. While the depth of discussions is appreciated, it may as well been presented by Hodor in Dothraki.

I'd recommend the following books instead:
Day One Library: MPLS for Enterprise Engineers - Darren O'Connor
MPLS and VPN Architectures by Pepelnjak and Guichard
Layer 2 VPN Architectures by Dmitry Bokotey
Traffic Engineering with MPLS by Osborne and Simha

[Ironman]

Best: CCNP ROUTE (Wendell Odom) - So well written, actually enjoyed reading it!
Worst: CCDA 640-864 Official Cert Guide (4th Edition) - too much info IMO, preferred Designing for Cisco Internetwork Solutions (DESGN) Foundation Learning Guide

[LynK]

I have the new CCNP Route 300-101 book by kevin wallace. Let me say this... FANTASTIC.

[jinxer]

Currently reading Cisco ISE for BYOD and Secure Unified Access by Aron Woland and im liking it. As for best i dont know. Worst: any swedish tech book


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[Otanx]

Best - Project Pheonix - Not really a tech book, but a novel about IT/project management. The boss man here is asking everyone to read it. Was funny, and I learned stuff.
Best 2 - Deploying IP Multicast Networks - Learned a lot from that book. Still remember half of it.
Worst - I agree with the CCDA OCG. Didn't like the book.

-Otanx

[AnthonyC]

For networking - Optimal Routing Design.
Tons of principles in there that will hold true even when the underlying technologies will one day change.