Subject: NE experience For your Web Site

Hi Robert

Thanks for a wonderful web site. You've helped me tremendously. Below I've listed my experience with the networking essentials exam. I took it on the 17th of April.

Greetings

Just passed the NE test with a 913 first time. All in all it was not that bad. Here are a few general comments before I list some of the questions I had.

I'm not a slow reader or test taker, but I was pressed for time. Everyone says read the questions carefully and that is important, but remember the timer is ticking away. Keep a mental note of what you still have to get done in your remaining time.

Secondly, you get one piece of paper and a pen when you take the test. Use it. Write stuff down especially with the scenario questions. What I found to be very helpful was to annotate the required result, and the desired results on the paper and then mark them as to whether the proposed solution met the requirement and the desired results. That way you can divide those long guys up and it makes it easier to figure out the answer instead of trying to remember all the BS they throw at you in the question.

Thirdly, some lessons learned on studying. I used the Sybex book and found it very interesting and easy to read. It provided a good background for more detailed study but I never would have passed the test based on that reference alone. Actually I spent to much time on that book. Read it through once and then move on.

Next I went through the Exam Cram. This book will definitely help you focus on what's important but again, I doubt I could have pulled it off on that one either.

Finally, I read every one of these postings. They are by far the best thing you can look at. Most of the questions you get on the test will be very, very similar to these, some exactly so. Know these postings inside out and you should have no troubles. I'm pretty sure of the ones I got wrong and they were questions I had definitely seen in these postings but was too lazy to really understand.

I also used the MCSE Test Prep by Que. This was probably the best reference I used when there were conflicting answers in these postings. It's a very good reference, but be forewarned, the questions in the book have many wrong answers. As someone else noted, the book definitely needs a better proofing.

  1. Had the mesh topology, but it looked more like a square with a computer in each corner and one in the middle as opposed to a "Star of David" as everyone else calls it.
  2. What device is at the transport level and above and converts protocols. I said Gateway.
  3. Had the T1 question with the three cities. Actually two questions.
  4. Had the 5 year old computer problem with Mary or somebody like that. I said her problem was she was using SLIP
  5. Had another one on SLIP and PPP, something to the effect of which protocols are used for remote access. Answer just listed two choices, both SLIP and PPP so I checked them both. Seemed too easy but I only missed 5 so I guess I got that one right.
  6. Had the old problem about extending the 10Base2 net to 300 meters. I said use repeater
  7. Had some nasty security related problems about user and share levels. It was the old story about having some huge network, 200 computers etc. Unfortunately I don't remember it very well. Anyway I probably got those incorrect because they mixed in WNT workstation and I'm not clear whether it supports share level, user level or both types of security. This could trick you up so it might be a good idea to check into it further.
  8. Had the computer naming problem (actually two questions), i.e use hexadecimal scheme for unique names etc. Read the question carefully. The question I had seemed to be different from what I had seen before. It stated that the users had to be named by what they did or something like that. In the second proposed solution (not the hex one), the naming scheme had two separate parts in the proposed solution. One for the servers and one for the clients.
  9. What would you use to subnet a TCP/IP network. (I said router because I think the operative word here is subnet, not segment but I may have gotten that wrong, bridge might be the correct answer)
  10. Had the one about what do you use when you need to mix voice date and video. I said ATM.
  11. Had the one about what is going to replace telephone lines ( I said basic rate ISDN)
  12. Had about three or four on trouble shooting. In most cases they mixed cable testers (TDM, Ohm meter) with protocol analyzers so it was pretty clear which to use.
  13. What is a characteristics of 803.3 10Base2 ( I said BNC connectors)
  14. What is the characteristics of 803.3 10BaseT ( I said RJ45 connectors – don't use RJ11 that's for telephones)
  15. Had one where they there was mixed RG58A/U and RG58U cabling and the network was having problems. (I said get rid of the RG58U).
  16. Had one where the cable tested 0 ohms and the terminators were 50 ohms and the T-connectors were something – can't remember the details ( said replace the cable – 0 ohms means there's a short, infinite ohms means the cable is open (broken))
  17. Had one IRQ conflict question. The conflict was with COM2..ie IRQ3
  18. Had the one about two NICs having the same address. Take a quick look when you see this one because they have a lot of information in table format in the question and the MAC business is at the end of the question so you waste a lot of time sorting out all the nonsense at the beginning of the question. (I said reset to factory setting)
  19. I don't remember the details but I did have the nonsense about changing packet sizes (making them smaller) and increasing the TCP Window Receive size to reduce network traffic.
  20. Did not have the 16 modems and 28.8 speed RAS monster.
  21. Did not have any wireless problems.
  22. Did not have any "where to find information" questions.

All in all there was quite a few very, very easy basic questions. A handful of more tricky ones, and about 10 hard ones.

 

Hope this helps. Good luck.