Cisco Systems RJ-45-to-AUX Introduction, Overview, Is This Book for You?, How to Use This Book

Introduction

Overview

For many years I have been a consultant for different companies and have written books on switch and router configurations and troubleshooting. During my years as a consultant I have had to either install, administer, or troubleshoot switching problems and configurations for switches without a good handbook. I have constantly gone through bookstores looking for a book on Cisco switch troubleshooting and configurations that didn’t deal with a Cisco curriculum. Guess what? I couldn’t find one!

I have written books related to the CCDP and CCNP curricula and always thought about writing a book that concentrated on Cisco switches. One day I was walking through a bookstore and noticed a book from The Coriolis Group called Cisco Routers for IP Routing Little Black Book. I immediately thought to myself that a Cisco Switching Little Black Book would be a great configuration handbook for many people. After contacting Coriolis and pitching them the idea for the book, I received a call from Steve Sayre, the publisher at Coriolis, who was excited about publishing a book of this nature. As I pondered and started putting my idea into an outline, I realized that I could not place everything that an administrator needed in a Little Black Book.

To make a long story short, a few months later, with a great big outline and help from Albert Ip and Hanson Nottingham, the book became this Black Book—the most feature−packed handbook for Cisco switching an administrator can buy. Not only do we cover the Cisco Catalyst switching line but we also cover the LightStream ATM switch series, Gigabit Switch Router Series (GSR), and the IGX and MGX WAN switch series.

Thanks for buying the Cisco Switching Black Book.

Is This Book for You?

The Cisco Switching Black Book was written with the intermediate or advanced user in mind. Among the topics that are covered, are:

∙Cisco Catalyst switch configuration and troubleshooting

∙Cisco IGX and MGX switch configuration

∙Cisco GSR switch configuration

∙Cisco switch troubleshooting

∙Cisco switch features

∙ATM LightStream switch configuration and troubleshooting

∙Switched network design issues

How to Use This Book

The examples in the Immediate Solutions are intended to teach you the basic steps in configuring Cisco Catalyst switches and their interfaces. Primarily, the Immediate Solutions will cover the information discussed in the In Depth section of each chapter. When we explain each scenario we will use the following notations:

∙<Italics in angle brackets> will be used to denote command elements that have a specific value that needs to be input, such as characters or numbers. Occasionally some other entry will be needed, which will be explained in each individual instance.

∙[Text in square brackets] is used to denote optional commands that can be configured.

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