CCNP Routing and Switching SWITCH 300-115: Official Cert Guide Har/Cdr Edition

This book is laid out well and covers the topics in detail. This is my supplemental study material and I am glad I bought this as it has sharpened some of the topics for me that wasn't covered so well (or at all) in my other material. Not sure if I can access the practice test or not with the Kindle version, but for the price it's still a bargain. For now, this is going to be a three star review until I sit for the exam. It's not a knock on the book, I just don't know how well it prepares one for 300-115 until I actually take it. I'll update later with results.-----------------------------EDITI sat for and passed SWITCH 300-115 earlier this week. Virtually everything on the test was in this book and this book covered the topics in enough detail to get you through the exam. I'll be buying the other two books in this series for ROUTE 300-101 and TSHOOT 300-135. This is a great book if you want to pass the exam as it doesn't have a ton of fluff and unimportant topics.

This Cisco Press book is great! There are a lot of people posting about how it does not cover 'EVERYTHING.' And maybe their is some truth to that. However, to not only pass your NP exam and become just that; a Network Professional, you should be using multiple sources. Books, labs, training online, on the job training ect. If you are using all the resources a someone training to an NP 'should' be using, this is THE book to have.I find it a great hybrid of a read. It does get super technical, but its not written like radio instructions; its written very well.I think its a must-get if you plan to tackle your NP. Combine it with other learning methods though.

The book explains most of the concepts well and concisely. A few errors here and there but that doesn't take away from the quality of the content in it's entirety.

Good book, Well explained, by far the deal you need to get certified.Take it together with Chris Braints CCNP switch book and the 100 $ Viurtual lab from Cisco and your off to go!Good luck and take your time for it....

I have read a lot of certification books before and usually they are a bit dry. This is actually an excellent read. Chapters are the perfect size averaging around 20 pages each.

Clear & concise, good questions, Practice exam was good, passed exam using this as one of my study materials.

I used this to study for the exam for my CCNP re-certification. Excellent coverage of material and did not put me to sleep like some others tend to do.

I'm a recertifying 642-813 CCNP. Here's my response from Cisco Certification Support for the obvious lack of mapping of questions from the CCNP Switch 300-115 exam to this Cisco "Official Certification Guide": "Exams could contain material that the courses or guides didn't cover so long as the exam items map to the blueprint." So read all you want, read this book cover to cover twice like I did; read command references; perform lab after lab on features you'll never implement; have many, many years of experience and still be hands-on, like I am, and you may very likely fail even after getting all the SIMs right.Apologies in advance--this may be more of a rant than a review. There are young engineers out there, and this subpar certification process is taking advantage of the consumer's desire to better themselves.From the book marketing materials: “enables you to succeed on the exam the first time and is the only self-study resource approved by Cisco.” Keep this in mind, and the fact that it doesn’t mention luck anywhere, because you would need to be lucky for several questions that this book doesn’t cover. Also keep in mind that since this is an official book with the vendor trademark on it, and it’s for an exam you will pay for, so one really can’t review this book and the marketing statement without also reviewing the exam itself to a degree.Note that there is more than one version of 300-115 test you can get on test day. From reading other reviews, I likely got the one that has folks angry based on focal points of that particular test, and I failed as well—by one question. I became even angrier when I tried to find the answers to questions on the test that I didn’t know, and I didn’t find them anywhere in this “official” book. The questions (plural) that stumped me were NOT things I would have seen in a lab (I had no trouble with the Sims on the exam or with other practical hands-on related questions); in fact, three separate facts asked about in questions not covered in the book were small factoids that are buried in online documentation that I can’t believe anyone would be reading in the first place, much less reading with a detail-oriented approach that you need for materials you’ll be tested on. So that you can see the unfairness I’m talking about without blowing my NDA, here’s an example close to one on the test:Q: Dynamic Arp Inspection is configured on a switch port. How many entries are in the DAI log buffer?A) 128B) 32C) Whatever is set by “logging buffered”D) DAI does not use a log bufferThis example shows what I mean; this isn’t anything you’d have in your lab, it isn’t in the book, but it is however, from “the book of who cares”. And it’s in a document at Cisco online, buried in a document on DAI.For one of the questions in particular that I googled after I failed, I had to look through three separate cisco search results to find the answer, but the fourth site down on the google page was a site that when I went to it I was shocked. It had the question and the answer, and many others, and was a site used by cheaters. Here I found that an entire cottage industry exists to pass these exams, complete with exams you can purchase that have the actual questions, and people dumping their knowledge from taking the exam. It’s a shame, but now I know how a “written CCIE” I used to work with had trouble subnetting.With due respect to your title and position, Mr. David Hucaby, Sir, it’s time for you to retire. Stop taking good and honest engineers’ money when you won’t take basic steps to check on the completeness of the material. You need an improvement cycle, Sir. Other current books you’ve written have people saying the same thing I’m saying. To quote one of the other reviews from one of your other books: “It's unfortunate when the Cisco-sponsored books don't accurately reflect the exam.” To expound on that to you, David, it’s not only unfortunate, it’s complete bull----. Your book is over 18 months in print. It’s “Official”. Its purpose is for the exam. I was able to find the missing pieces to your material that affected me within an hour after taking my exam. If Cisco doesn’t care enough to coordinate with you to make sure the “Official” book covers the questions on the exam, or you don’t care enough to coordinate with them and revise your books, then retire. Stop being a part of a mismanaged Cisco Certification process screwing professionals with demanding jobs and families out of precious time when the just about the only way to really pass the exam is through asking someone what’s actually on it and/or having a little luck. There are “resources” I mentioned above that would easily let you, David, know what is on the exam and not in your book. You should be reviewing that sort of thing and issuing another edition instead of writing more “almost-there” books that indirectly embolden and add an element of justification to a cottage industry of cheating.Cisco, with due respect to your position as a market leader, this $250 exam is not representative of your standards. Who is writing your questions? Better yet, who is their QA on this? Questions that are a game of gotchas are somewhat acceptable in exams, but I found this exam uncreative and unpolished to say the least (a.k.a.,Let’s ask them something I KNOW they won’t know). I also found myself trying to figure out what the tester was trying to ask instead of what the test was actually asking on more than one occasion. I thought this was a Professional level exam, Cisco. This exam is used for job quals, DoD task levels, and more. You have a responsibility here, and you aren’t maintaining this certification product. Shut it down if you aren’t going to take it seriously. Stop taking $250 (or more!) from working folks who want to better themselves, because it’s insulting at that price point to find bad wording, wrong technical information in questions, or even spelling errors. Test-takers are taking time away from themselves in the exam to write comments to fix your product, and have done so for well over a year; but since your exam has been on the street for almost 18 months and I just took the crap that I took, it’s obvious you don’t care about doing internal QA or market QA. You know people are cheating like crazy to pass your exam, and you do nothing to help the honest folks. C’mon guys.Cisco Press is not Cisco, but people have these complaints about several exams all the time, and Cisco points at its “blueprint” and does not address the issues; however, any reasonable person would assume if a book is Official, there’s an obvious implication that Cisco has evaluated it for both the blueprint and the certification exam. Why should it make sense to the exam community that when exam content is known widely (especially on available cheat sites), that I should read the OCG, duplicative information in a Foundation Learning Guide, duplicative information in online .pdfs at Cisco, all because no one book desires to have it in one place relevant to the exam. Oh wait, that would be the job of the OCG. I have lost respect for the companies involved here, especially after the time I put into the appeal, and their cookie-cutter negative response. Screw the CCNP, I can’t get the time I wasted on these companies’ products back.