Book Club

You will find a good introduction for every primary element of the Cisco IOS, such as the primer on the file management at the beginning of the book. Each chapter of recipes begins with a helpful, explanatory description of each type of task grouping, whether it be TACACS+ controls or IP Multicast. The section on "Queueing and Congestion" is probably one of the most valuable in the book. This section is better put together than what you would find even on Cisco's web site.

There are a few downsides. Some important topics, such as Netflow and Bridging, are not given much attention, if any at all, while other less common topics, such as DLSw and EIGRP, get a lot of emphasis. Nevertheless, that is to be expected since Cisco routers are designed to meet a variety of requirements.

The Perl and Expect scripts included in some of the recipes are invaluable. My only gripe is that there should be a separate index for listing where you can find these scripts within the text, or else the scripts should have been put in a separate appendix.

The recipe orientation means that this is not well suited to the novice. Instead, Cisco Cookbook is designed to be used as a handy reference for tackling particular tasks. The intermediate or expert Cisco administrator will find this the next best thing short of pouring through the documentation on Cisco's website.

Review by: Clarke Morledge
October 26, 2004