Odem's or Lammle for first CCNA study book????

sferg410

Hello. Now I have my lab set-up it is time to start studying. I have both the Odem and Lammle book available. Is there any general opinion on one being better than the other for a newbie CCNA student?
I have read through the Barker and Wallace Network+ N10-006 book and watched the Professor Messer vids for Network+ also as a grounding before I attempted CCNA.
Thanks

The_Expert

Read both books. Lammle is easier / quicker to read. Odom will go into a lot more detail.

sferg410

The_Expert wrote: »

Read both books. Lammle is easier / quicker to read. Odom will go into a lot more detail.

So clearly based on that opinion then Lammle first..

zzyzz

Very different writing styles. Odom talks about the topic in great detail but Lammle uses the actual CLI commands to help you understand the topic. What I did was read Odom to get a general understanding of the topic. Then right before I started labbing I would read Lammle to get a general feel of the CLI input.

networker050184

What I like to do is watch a video on the subject, CBT Nuggets, youtube, etc., then read the corresponding chapter. I find it much easier to read technical depth about a subject when you have a nice foundation knowledge level. If you are only going to read one book though I'd definitely suggest Odom.

johnnyqt25

I have read both books and lammle is the much easier read, but I really appreciated the details of odom's. I suggest reading odom first, and lammle for review.

Chewsmoka

zzyzz wrote: »

Very different writing styles. Odom talks about the topic in great detail but Lammle uses the actual CLI commands to help you understand the topic. What I did was read Odom to get a general understanding of the topic. Then right before I started labbing I would read Lammle to get a general feel of the CLI input.

Not to hi-jack the thread but I was wondering how much of each book was really worth remembering? I'm nearly done with the first part of Odom's OCG. Is it necessary to know every keynote/table by heart? I picked up the text 2 weeks ago and have been trying to memorize every keynote by heart.. Is this overkill? I have Lammle's book as well but find it really bland compared to the OCG. If I'd be better off reading both concurrently, which order should one follow the other?

The one off-putting thing about Odom's OCG is there are no PacketTracer/Physical labs to go along with the text, just memory tables and review. I'm down to learn both, but it's always nice to know what to expect.

GDaines

I own both the Sybex book by Todd Lammle, and the CiscoPress Wendell Odom books, but I've only been reading the former so cannot comment on how the two compare. Having read chapters in Lammle's book I found the Chris Bryant Udemy videos were a huge help as they allowed the information I'd read to sink in more clearly, and sometimes even clarified subjects I'd struggled to grasp. I've heard good things about the CBT Nuggets videos but haven't ever seen them. There's a course on YouTube that you can access free here, I've watched the odd video when I'm struggling on a particular topic. And of course you can't beat Google for looking up topics or commands if you need examples.

There are programs out there that allow you to download YouTube content so that you can watch it locally, and repeatedly. And Udemy let you download their video courses too, though there's no all-in-one download option so in this Udemy course there are 202 videos to download one by one.

I'm hoping if I can ever get IPv6 into my head to take the CCENT later this month, so then I'll know if my study material and lab was sufficient. If I fail I'll take a look at the Odom books and I should still have time for another go at the v2 exam.