作者：Tim Boyles and Dave Hucaby, CCIE #4594
出版日期：2001
出版社：Cisco Press
页数：576
ISBN：1-58720-000-7
文件格式：PDF

Professional certifications have been an important part of thecomputing industry for many years and will continue to become moreimportant. Many reasons exist for these certifications, but the mostpopularly cited reason is that of credibility. All other considerationsheld equal, the certified employee/consultant/job candidate isconsidered more valuable than one who is not.
Goals and Methods
The most important and somewhat obvious goal of this book is to helpyou pass the Switching exam (#640-504). In fact, if the primaryobjective of this book was different, then the book’s title would bemisleading; however, the methods used in this book to help you pass theCCNP Switching exam are designed to also make you much moreknowledgeable about how to do your job. While this book and theaccompanying CD together have more than enough questions to help youprepare for the actual exam, the method in which they are used is notto simply make you memorize as many questions and answers as youpossibly can.
The key approach used in this book is to help you discover the examtopics that you need to review in more depth, to help you fullyunderstand and remember those details, and to help you prove toyourself that you have retained your knowledge of those topics. So thisbook does not try to help you pass by memorization but helps you trulylearn and understand the topics. The Switching exam is just one of thefoundation topics in the CCNP certification and the knowledge containedwithin is vitally important to consider yourself a truly skilledrouting/switching engineer or specialist. This book would do you adisservice if it didn’t attempt to help you learn the material. To thatend, the book will help you pass the Switching exam by using thefollowing methods:
• Helping you discover which test topics you have not mastered
• Providing explanations and information to fill in your knowledge gaps
• Supplying exercises and scenarios that enhance your ability to recall and deduce the answers to test questions
• Providing practice exercises on the topics and the testing process via test questions on the CD