I passed the Networking Essentials exam on August 6, 1998 with a score of 948. It was my first attempt at the test and the first on the road to the MCSE certificate. I prepared the exam using the MS prep book and the QUE questions book (I found the latter more confusing than useful).

The exam is moderately difficult and the questions have to be read very carefully, there is a lot of playing around with the wording of the questions, I feel as if that this tests your understanding of the questions more than your knowledge of the subject.

The exam can be realistically finished in about 45 minutes. I found the time allocated more than enough. I reviewed all the questions and I found a couple of silly mistakes that I made simply because I answered the questions quickly. Robert’s Braindump site is a must, I recognized a lot of questions simply by reading the dumps on this site.

Here are the questions that I was not sure of:

Question: You need to connect an Ethernet network, Token Ring network and a Fiber Optic network by a device that provides flow control, Broadcast management and multiple communication paths

Options: Gateway, Router, Repeater, Brouter

I chose the Router here although I was tempted to choose the Gateway. The flow control bit made me uncertain about the Gateway option.

Question: Packet switching connection service that provides reliable delivery in an unreliable environment.

Options: X.25, Frame relay, ATM, ISDN

I chose X.25

This question has come up many times and I am still unsure of the correct answer;

Question: You need to install a 100 Mbps network and you have a plenum space of half a meter or so, keep the cost to a minimum

Options: Coax, Fiber Optic, UTP, STP

I chose Fiber Optic although it is the most expensive, I thought that the catch was in the UTP which did not specify the necessary category, so the only sure option was Fiber Optic. When I ended the exam and I thought about this I changed my mind, and if I was to take the exam once more I would probably choose UTP

Question: You want to connect two Ethernet networks and you want them to communicate using both NetBUEI and Nwlink IPX, you also want to limit traffic between the two networks.

Options: Bridge, Router, Repeater, Gateway

I chose Bridge because it provides a level of separation between networks in that it will send packets to the proper port if it is in the routing table and it will handle NetBEUI

Question: You want communication on the network to continue even if one of the server’s hard disks fails, limit the cost.

Options: RAID1, RAID5, Duplexed disk, backup tape

I chose the RAID 5 option because it costs less initially than RAID1

Question: Peer-to-Peer network with 5 Win95 computers, which protocol would you choose?

Options: DLC, NFS, Nwlink IPX, XNS

I chose Nwlink IPX since IPX/SPX would be a good option for Peer-to-Peer networks if NetBEUI is not a choice and Nwlink is a Microsoft Implementaion of the IPX/SPX protocol

Question: What must you ensure that a NetBIOS name does not duplicate? Choose all that apply

Options: Another computer name, another domain name, another workgroup name, another share name

I chose the first three and I am not sure of this one

Question: Which WAN link can provide transmissions at any available speed?

Options: T1, X.25, Frame relay, ATM

I chose the ATM option because it does provide higher speeds than all of the others.

I also had the regular 3 sites with 16 port RAS connections running 28.8 modems, requirement was a speed of 1 Mbps and connections even if one link fails. I answered "Does not meet requirements" to this one although there is a lot of debate on this one.

I had two questions with the "Exhibit" button, both were Ethernet 10Base2 networks with one image containing a segment that was earthed on both ends and the other question had the segment with three terminators. Pretty obvious.

One last thought: I was thinking of buying the TRANSCENDERS but I found them to be too expensive and I really do not understand why can’t I see which questions I missed. Now I passed the NE exam but I still have doubts about some answers.

Best of luck