Network warrior. Demand study
Hello, dear readers, with the first day of summer you!
Today we wanted to pull out a rather old book from the bins, which surprisingly does not leave the top positions of the Amazon market, but for some reason has not yet been translated into Russian. The post will be interested in experienced admins, who may have long since studied this work in the original, but still ...
Continued under the cut
It's about the book "Network Warrior" by the notorious Gary Donahue.
')
The book has grown out of the CCNA Exam Preparation, but at the time of the second edition it has already become a network encyclopedia describing the solution of various problems in the field of switching, virtual networks, backbone networks, channel aggregation, spanning trees, routing, tunneling, network redundancy, various Cisco devices, frame relay, voice, wireless, authentication, firewall settings - this is an incomplete list of topics covered. Your attention is invited to the translation of the review of the book, published shortly after its publication.
The question arises: is such a book needed, is it relevant four years after the release?
Please participate in the survey
Today we wanted to pull out a rather old book from the bins, which surprisingly does not leave the top positions of the Amazon market, but for some reason has not yet been translated into Russian. The post will be interested in experienced admins, who may have long since studied this work in the original, but still ...
Continued under the cut
It's about the book "Network Warrior" by the notorious Gary Donahue.
')
The book has grown out of the CCNA Exam Preparation, but at the time of the second edition it has already become a network encyclopedia describing the solution of various problems in the field of switching, virtual networks, backbone networks, channel aggregation, spanning trees, routing, tunneling, network redundancy, various Cisco devices, frame relay, voice, wireless, authentication, firewall settings - this is an incomplete list of topics covered. Your attention is invited to the translation of the review of the book, published shortly after its publication.
Read review
Recently, the long-awaited 2nd edition of Network Warrior, written by actor Gary Donahue (aka GAD), was published by O'Reilly. The book turned out really long-awaited, because the network technology has gone far ahead after the first edition, published back in 2007. I am very glad that the book contains material about Cisco ASA, Cisco Nexus, as well as IPv6 and Voice, not to mention some other topics. Most of the examples in the book (if not all) are shown in various Cisco languages ​​— CatOS, IOS, and NX-OS. These examples are excellent help to understand the details, as well as to evaluate the differences of codes and their evolution.
The first chapters of the book perfectly help to master the basic knowledge. The book begins with an introduction to the history of hubs, then the author proceeds to the consideration of switches, covers the topic of auto-negotiation, and finally describes the virtual local area network. There are basic network configurations, each such configuration has a characteristic shape. Further, the author covers many other technologies and topology level 2, in particular, VTP, as well as the pitfalls associated with these technologies. The author talks about channel aggregation using Ethernetchannel, connecting the device to two chassis, and even Nexus vPC.
A very interesting section on spanning (connecting) trees. It discusses the many features of such trees, as well as many common problems. I was rather surprised to find no mention in the book about Fabric Path, Trill, Open Flow or 802.11aq technologies (connections along the shortest path), since these are the main innovative technologies associated with spanning trees. Of course, these technologies are more often used in data center networks and campus-type networks, but when you consider that the reader may need to work with Cisco Nexus, he should be aware of these solutions and also know how they differ from the ordinary spanning tree.
The routing section perfectly describes the redirection tables and the corresponding protocols - OSPF, BGP, EIGRP, RIP. The only IGP protocol that is overlooked is IS-IS. Well, that's okay, because this protocol is not a standard for large enterprises, but is used by service providers. Further, the author describes the various misfortunes associated with redistribution, and also tells about filtering by route labels, etc. This is an indispensable knowledge to work on real projects. The author discusses the HSRP and GLBP protocols, accompanying the theory with excellent examples, but does not affect the VRRP protocol - however, the latter protocol is basically similar to HSRP.
The chapters on the Nexus introduce the reader in detail to the 7000, 5000, 2000 and 1000 models from the family of these products, as well as their nuances. If you are interested in the device of the entire Nexus line, pay attention to this chapter!
The telecommunications section of the book begins with a good glossary explaining many common terms. This is an excellent online reference, especially when compared to the “Newtonian telecommunications dictionary” (which should be on the shelf of every specialist). Further, the author discusses in detail T1, DS3 and frame relay, and the MPLS protocol only affects in passing.
The Cisco ASA chapter basically replaces the PIX chapter from the first edition — which is good. Here, everything from basic configuration options to multi-context design is described in an accessible form - in short, everything that can occur in practice. One of the topics that, in my opinion, was recently reworked is the material about restoring firewalls after a failure. Previously, we used crossover cables to create fault-tolerant interfaces between firewalls - this is what this book is about. But now, in my opinion, fault tolerance is often achieved by creating a VLAN, as can be seen from the example of Cisco SRND - Enterprise Internet Edge Design. Anyway, both solutions are quite practical and workable - it is only important to choose the right one, taking into account your task.
The chapter on wireless networks is a bit superficial, it only discusses autonomous access points. The topics of lightweight APs and their controllers are not covered. In my opinion, autonomous access points are still used very widely, so a specialist should be confident in them. If, by chance, you have to deal with lightweight APs, then fundamentally this technology will not be new to you, you can manage with both technologies as if through “one window”.
The last section, which I will discuss only briefly, is devoted to the quality of service. This is a true author of the horse, which is easy to see. This chapter will leave you the most pleasant experience.
So, we have a fairly high-quality book in which the author remarkably described a very wide range of topics. It is a good book to have on hand when you need to either get an overview of the technology, or train others to work with this technology. The book will decorate the library of any specialist!
The first chapters of the book perfectly help to master the basic knowledge. The book begins with an introduction to the history of hubs, then the author proceeds to the consideration of switches, covers the topic of auto-negotiation, and finally describes the virtual local area network. There are basic network configurations, each such configuration has a characteristic shape. Further, the author covers many other technologies and topology level 2, in particular, VTP, as well as the pitfalls associated with these technologies. The author talks about channel aggregation using Ethernetchannel, connecting the device to two chassis, and even Nexus vPC.
A very interesting section on spanning (connecting) trees. It discusses the many features of such trees, as well as many common problems. I was rather surprised to find no mention in the book about Fabric Path, Trill, Open Flow or 802.11aq technologies (connections along the shortest path), since these are the main innovative technologies associated with spanning trees. Of course, these technologies are more often used in data center networks and campus-type networks, but when you consider that the reader may need to work with Cisco Nexus, he should be aware of these solutions and also know how they differ from the ordinary spanning tree.
The routing section perfectly describes the redirection tables and the corresponding protocols - OSPF, BGP, EIGRP, RIP. The only IGP protocol that is overlooked is IS-IS. Well, that's okay, because this protocol is not a standard for large enterprises, but is used by service providers. Further, the author describes the various misfortunes associated with redistribution, and also tells about filtering by route labels, etc. This is an indispensable knowledge to work on real projects. The author discusses the HSRP and GLBP protocols, accompanying the theory with excellent examples, but does not affect the VRRP protocol - however, the latter protocol is basically similar to HSRP.
The chapters on the Nexus introduce the reader in detail to the 7000, 5000, 2000 and 1000 models from the family of these products, as well as their nuances. If you are interested in the device of the entire Nexus line, pay attention to this chapter!
The telecommunications section of the book begins with a good glossary explaining many common terms. This is an excellent online reference, especially when compared to the “Newtonian telecommunications dictionary” (which should be on the shelf of every specialist). Further, the author discusses in detail T1, DS3 and frame relay, and the MPLS protocol only affects in passing.
The Cisco ASA chapter basically replaces the PIX chapter from the first edition — which is good. Here, everything from basic configuration options to multi-context design is described in an accessible form - in short, everything that can occur in practice. One of the topics that, in my opinion, was recently reworked is the material about restoring firewalls after a failure. Previously, we used crossover cables to create fault-tolerant interfaces between firewalls - this is what this book is about. But now, in my opinion, fault tolerance is often achieved by creating a VLAN, as can be seen from the example of Cisco SRND - Enterprise Internet Edge Design. Anyway, both solutions are quite practical and workable - it is only important to choose the right one, taking into account your task.
The chapter on wireless networks is a bit superficial, it only discusses autonomous access points. The topics of lightweight APs and their controllers are not covered. In my opinion, autonomous access points are still used very widely, so a specialist should be confident in them. If, by chance, you have to deal with lightweight APs, then fundamentally this technology will not be new to you, you can manage with both technologies as if through “one window”.
The last section, which I will discuss only briefly, is devoted to the quality of service. This is a true author of the horse, which is easy to see. This chapter will leave you the most pleasant experience.
So, we have a fairly high-quality book in which the author remarkably described a very wide range of topics. It is a good book to have on hand when you need to either get an overview of the technology, or train others to work with this technology. The book will decorate the library of any specialist!
The question arises: is such a book needed, is it relevant four years after the release?
Please participate in the survey
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/259227/
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