Network Warrior is a book that I’ve seen acclaimed many times despite its huge size. Even with more than 700 pages, it isn’t an advanced book on networking. It contains more than 40 chapters focusing on a single topic. The author always helps you get started, shows how it works and provides one or several real-world examples. Other books are cited to dive deeper into many topics.

It’s easy to understand why this book is so beloved. It’s literally solid experiences condensed and printed on paper. This book is full of information to get your work done. It’s like learning from someone so much more experienced (= having already done many errors) that truly cares about you to help you avoid repeating the same mistakes.

The main downside of such a book is the more practical a book gets, the quickest it becomes outdated. Even if network protocols outlast any book on the subject, the practical sections demonstrating how to operate Cisco devices are probably less relevant today.