Subject: TCP/IP

Good Day! I wrote and passed TCP/IP for NT 4.0 (70-59) yesterday with an 827 (750 required) - not a great score, but a pass. 5 down, 1 to go.

In addition to Herb Martin's wonderful class, I used the "MCSE Exam Cram for TCP/IP" book which I had to order from Amazon Books (www.amazon.com) as it just recently came out. The book was good, though not nearly as helpful as the "MCSE Exam Cram for NT Server Enterprise" (which I strongly recommend). The TCP/IP book seemed to be thrown together in somewhat of a hurry as it had both typos and at least a few incidences of wrong information.

Anyway, the test was not nearly as difficult as I imagined. The subnetting questions (only 4 questions as I recall) were all straightforward and basic. Not nearly as cumbersome or complicated as the examples I've seen elsewhere (such as Transcender).

There were alot of questions on the utilities including arp, net use, ping, tracert, route add, netstat (several) and nbtstat. However, none of the questions involved needing to know the switches associated with these commands. As I was nearing the end of the test, I was thinking I was about to get out easy as I hadn't run into any complicated scenario questions. Then, I got hit with a scenario that spanned two questions followed by a scenario that spanned 4 questions. These weren't too difficult. In fact the 4 question scenario involved having a server that you wanted to use to do a variety of things (assign ip addresses, route, and something else I can't remember). Anyway, there was a required result and 3 optional results. The solution was the only thing to change across the 4 questions. In the first question, it was a dreadful solution and didn't even meet the required result. Then each solution became progressively better until on the 4th question, the solution met the required and all optional results. Another thing about the test I wanted to share is a general test taking tip about the way the answers are written, to ensure you know the information they are attempting to measure.

I wasn't sure of the answer to the "route add" question as I couldn't remember the command parameters (I know now that it's route add {destination address} mask {netmask} {gateway}). However, I figured it out by looking at the answers and you could see for each of the parameters the correct solution showed two of the correct items across each solution.

For example, in the following items, you can see there are 2 occurrences of B in the first parameter, two occurrences of A in the second parameter and 2 occurrences of C in the third parameter.

route add A mask A B

route add B mask A C <-- correct

route add B mask C A

route add C mask B C

Now, I wouldn't recognize this trick for any question unless you have no other way of determining the answer and are about to guess. However, in that case, this trick may give you a slight edge. If anyone has any other questions about TCP/IP (or Workstation, Server, Enterprise or Essentials which I have also completed), please feel free to email me.

Well, IIS next week. I'll let you know about it. Good luck to everyone in their quest for the holy grail of networking!

-Herb