This book falls into the category of books that provide a survey of a field, useful for a beginner but certainly not for an advanced network administrator or cabling installer. For example, I needed to send instructions to an electrician at a remote site in Alaska on basic cabling techniques so that he could set up a small LAN using best practices. Unfortunately, this book lacked a basic procedure on how to punch down strands of 4-pair on to a punch down block. Another example, the 568a / 568b issues are poorly explained. Therefore, if you need real, hands-on information for an implementation, then move on to another book, perhaps one from BCSI, or perhaps the Sybex book by Groth and McBee.