To: [email protected]
Subject: 70-058

I passed my 058 exam on 11/30/97.
After 58 questions in 90 min I've got 810 and passing score was 793.
I was very dissapointed because I studyed a lot.

The bases was MS Press Self-Study books "Networking Essensials", "Windows NT Network Administration" and "Windows NT Technical Support".
As an addition I used 803 self-administered exam and Microsoft PEP tests, etc. In short anything that could be find on the Web for free.
The greatest help I've got from Transcender simulation exam. It is worth every penny I paid. There are 4 exams in the pool: A,B,C and D. A, B, C are filled up with conventional questions and relatively easy (if you know the subject from MS Press Self-study books). Exam D is much harder because it has questions that involves knowledge from MS TechNet articles, Server and Workstation Service kit and NT Books Online.
After a week of training on this exams which I mastered at 1000 points I felt prepared for the real one.

You have to develop the technology of going throug the exam.

• Answer the simple questions first.
• Go from the 1st, try to answer and mark if you are not sure 100%.
• If you have time to rethink come later.
• Resolve the situations after all the simple questions are answered.
• If you meet the one that describes the situation mark it even without reading and go on like this untill you get to the simple question.
• At the end of the exam you'll get the option to review the questions and all the situations are going to be marked in red.
• From here you can take them one by one. Read every description very carefully. The single word could give you the hint what to take into account when you will judge proposed solution.
• Put the demands of the situation into the frame:
  • Main request:
  • Optional #1:
  • Optional#2:
  • Solution:
• Try to write it down. Analyse the proposed solution and see if it satisfies the Request, Opt#1 or Opt#2.

It helps to stay organized when you overwhelmed by the details of the situation.

I've got 14 (!) questions that described the situations and the percentage of right answers was 93%.

2 situations about the company LANs in 3 different locations, same protocol, same LAN speed.
WAN connection is needed at the speed not less than 1Mbps. Optional demand for redundancy and optional demand retain the speed if one of the connection fails.
In the 1st situation was proposed install 3 T1 lines.
In the 2nd only 2 T1 lines.

2 situations about NetBIOS naming.
In the 1st situation was proposed to fix the names from 15 digit hexadecimals.
In the 2nd situation was proposed to construct the names from characters (8char+5char+2char).

2 situations about rebuilding existing LAN in order to improve security. That's where you need the knowledge from "Network Administration". Whatever is written in "Networking Essentials" is definetly not enough.

High level of security and fast recoverability (within 2 hours) was requested. Proposed solution describes the stages of constructing secure server-based LAN with auditing for clients and resourses, server phisical security and backup schedule.

I've got low score on the questions about network cards. Here's the one:

Goes description of the hardware with IRQ's 2,3,4,6,14. Network card has noncontradictory IRQ5, Base I/O 300 and some long 12 digits hw address.Computer cannot connect to the network.

Proposed answers:

• Reset HW address to factory default.
• Change I/O to 320.
• Change IRQ to 10
• Change the transceiver type.

There were absolutly no questions about cable length requirements except of the one:

"Different clients in different times have troubles connecting to the Ethernet built on mixed set of cables: RG-58 and RG-58 A/U."
Proposed solutions include changing terminators, type of the cables on the whole net and replacement RG-58 to RG-58 A/U.

Nevertheless, I think that the knowledge of OSI model, layout of Protocols over the levels of the OSI model is absolutely essential. There were questions about repeaters, bridges, routersand gateways, but all of them were based on the conventional knowledge.

There were no questions about WINS, DNS and DHCP, but questions about proper protocol in the mixed environment: PC's, UNIX stations and mainfraimes.

Resume.

One book even official MS Press Self-Paced Training and Transcender simulation exams are not enough. You'll need the knowledge from Network Administration and NT Technical support and other Microsoft resources. Be careful when looking for right answeres. There's the half-truth, the real truth and truth by Microsoft. In order to pass the exam you need the last one.

You don't have to pay $1000 for the trainer-guided course. You can do it on your own

Good luck.