Welcome! Today we’ll be reviewing CCNA 200-301 Official Cert Guide by Wendell Odom.
Review Summary
- Length: 29 chapters, 795 pages
- Cover Type: Hard
- Personal Completion Time: Roughly 3 months
- TL;DR Summary: The official certification guide for the CCNA; highly rated on Amazon, this book is likely what you’ll want to use if you plan on taking (and passing) your CCNA exam!
- Book Link: Amazon
- Final Rating: 4 / 5 Stars
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The CCNA is widely regarded as one of the most important certifications in the networking field. If you plan on working (or currently work as) a network engineer or network specialist you’ve likely heard of this certification as Cisco (and, by extension, Cisco’s networking equipment) can be found in almost every major network in use today. The CCNA covers both networking and, more importantly, working with the Cisco command line. This command line is the lifeblood of all Cisco equipment – it’s used almost exclusively by network engineers to interact with and configure said equipment, and any network engineer worth his salt likely has at least a few of these commands dedicated to memory.
While I can only speak to Volume 1 of this book (you’ll also need to pick up Volume 2 since the CCNA is a two part examination) I can attest to the high quality this book provides in case it wasn’t already evident from the large “Official Cert Guide” text on the cover! Not only does this book provide a great primer to some foundational networking concepts that every network engineer should know, it also covers the entire CCNA CBK (and, by extension, everything you need to know to pass your exam)! Truthfully, this is the only certification study guide I read cover-to-cover and didn’t make an examination attempt for since I had originally read this book at a point in my life when I was unsure what certifications (and career paths) to pursue. While I can’t confirm whether this is “the study guide” you’ll want to use to pass your CCNA, I can say that (despite being personally disinterested in the topics discussed) the book is well formatted and does a great job breaking down some of the trickier parts of networking (like subnetting). Overall, I suspect you could use these two volumes in addition to some extra practice questions to successfully cover any worries you might have over passing the CCNA and thus it earns my highest recommendation.