Cisco Catalyst Switches (Cisco Technical Expert) Book

Cisco Catalyst LAN Switching explains how Cisco's line of Catalyst network switches work in theory and in practice. Written by folks who teach Cisco engineers for a living, this book has the feel of a classroom lecture in which the instructor projects an image onto a screen and then proceeds to discuss it.

As such, this book demystifies important concepts and provides an introduction to practical experimentation. Switching and bridging are complex tasks that the authors ably explain, along with the differences among the components in the Catalyst line and strategies for fitting Catalyst switches into virtual local area networks (VLANs).

This book provides detailed configuration information on the Catalyst 5000 series. Ultimately it shuns Cisco Works for Switched Internetworks in favor of the raw command line in order to highlight the differences between the Catalyst operating system and standard Cisco Internetworking Operating System (IOS).

You'll find concise statements describing many administrative tasks, including the configuration of Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) and Token Ring networks. Here, the authors support their command and output listings with conceptual diagrams that show the effects of the command sequences. You can use this book as a training aid for the Cisco professional certification exams too--review questions appear at the end of each chapter. --David Wall

Topics covered: Switching and bridging concepts, contrasting bridging architectures, virtual private networks (VPNs), virtual local area networks (VLANs), and details of configuring the Cisco Catalyst 5000 series of products.