Subject: 70-058 reflections

First, let me say thank you to Rob for providing this best of MSCE sites. It and all the others helped a good deal and for all I know tipped the balance over into passing.

Stuff that surprised me:

Detailed questions about 802.3 standard. Does it specify 50 ohm terminators, or BNC connections, or other unlikely things? I said BNC connector to -two- questions about this (essentially same question twice).

Two questions about NetBIOS naming convention. This is not in the Self-Study guide, guys. I guessed on these, pretty wildly, though obviously a hexadecimal name is not going to tell what the server is for.

A question on mesh topography, easy if you have read the other online comments. It showed a diagram of a mesh network and asked what kind of layout it was.

Two or three questions on IPX protocol. When I was in doubt, I said "the frame settings are screwed up," as another online person suggested.

A couple strange questions on user-level vs. share level security. One was easy: a Win95 network can't do user-level. The other I wasn't sure about: a NT Workstation network with no servers. I said it could do both.

In the case analyses, if the proposed solution doesn't say "implement auditing", don't assume the admin is going to do it just because he could. I was very uncertain about a problem like this until I saw another where the solution specifically said "implement auditing".

That's all I can remember offhand. Another suggestion I would like to echo: unlike the Win 95 exam, there were a lot of really hard questions right at the beginning of this exam. Don't be shy about marking them and coming back to them later after you get comfortable.

Oh, and if you schedule your tests with the 755 EXAM number, you might want to confirm your schedule before going in. They had screwed mine up (fixable fortunately) and the receptionist went on quite a bit about what idiots they are out there.

Good luck!