On Fri, 8 Nov 1996, Deepak Jain wrote:
Has anyone though of how much money some publisher could make with a Cisco for Dummies<tm> book? Say it runs $49.95 and is 2000 pages. It has every obscure use of every command in say the IP IOS or Netflow Switching or everything Cisco makes [depending on size here] It strikes me that the UniversCD and the bound/hard copy manuals [including the ones from the classes] are not all that useful unless you remember the approximate syntax of the command or that it has been expanded in the next version of IOS.
Cisco has some things like that already, in the training guides for their Introduction to Cisco Router Configuration (ICRC) and Advanced Cisco Router Configuration (ACRC) courses, and IIRC all the text is also on their web site someplace. Truth is, it's not all that useful without the commentary and experience of the instructor, especially since the course gets into all kinds of weird stuff (wanna bridge xns through a tunnel over tcp/ip?), and barely touches on the type of BGP stuff talked about on this list. However, there're a lot of good examples & FAQs and such on Cisco's web page if you search around long enough. This is not to say that I don't think such a book would be useful, but I'd really, REALLY hate to see "Cisco for Dummies" 'cause it doesn't take much for an unclueful person with a Cisco in the right place to really screw things up for the rest of us. -- J.D. Falk <lart@cais.net> Network Operations Center <noc@cais.net> CAIS Internet Office (703) 448-4470 McLean, Virginia, USA NOC 1-888-CAIS-NOC