Subject: MCSE: TCP/IP 4.0 - Passed - Thanks Herb :)

I passed Internetworking with Microsoft TCP/IP 4.0 last Thursday with an 896/1000.

The book I used: Networking With Microsoft TCP/IP 4.0 by Drew Heywood and Rob Scrimger: Certified Administrator's Resource Edition (ISBN 1-56205-791-x)

Special thanks to Herb Martin for recommending this book to me. This book does have a few misprints in the subnetting section, but it was an absolutely EXCELLENT resource and I intend to keep it at my side. This book covered everything in detail. The only exception would be DHCP redundancy. I feel that the book did not cover that enough in detail as per required by the exam. But maybe I didn't read enough into it. The book also pounded into my head that the subnet masking number 128 was invalid... this is the Microsoft way. Herb and two other friends of mine pointed out that in the real world, the subnet mask number 128 is in fact valid. It has to do with older routers and such that do not support the subnet mask 255.255.128.0 anymore.

If you would like to use this book, make sure you get the Certified Administrator's Resource Edition because there are currently two different versions of this book. (The cert. admin. res. edition has a red banner going across the top).

The book was a bit lengthy (600+ pages) but it is definately worth it. I was able to devour it in about 10 days (Grasping subnetting alone took me almost 3 days).

As far as hints, be sure you know how to make that subnetting table. It helped speed things up on alot of questions. Another thing, know your subnetting. Subnetting is the common thread for probably 65% of the questions.

Know all of your command prompt commands with switches... do not listen to the brain dumps that say "Don't bother remembering switches". The test DOES cover the switches!

There were quite a few questions on "Here's the IPCONFIG /ALL printout".... what's wrong? I had 4 scenerio questions... all exactly the same except the proposed solution changed with each question. I also had 2 scenerio questions on DHCP redundancy. A few questions on LPD, LPR, and LPQ. Know your UNIX commands to get these easy ones!

I got most of my command line questions in the first half of the test... which I was comfortable with. I thought by question 29, I had a 1000 going so far and I had only used about 15 minutes of the clock so far. Then came the scenerio questions and the "It's broke, what's wrong" questions..... These require a good deal of thought. Avoid a quick answer such as "Default gateway" or "Subnet Mask". I explored all possibilities. Sometimes the IP address was invalid.

Know TCP/IP troubleshooting A-Z here.

There were a few diagram questions on routing. Know your "ROUTE ADD" command cold! (including deleting routes)

Know how to implement 2 different types of routing on a multihomed NT computer.

Know how to implement DHCP forwarding.

Know WINS Proxy, what it does, how it works and which clients need it.

Know NetBIOS and host name resolution (b-node, p-node, m-node, and h-node).

I did see one or two questions on IIS on the exam.

Know your LMHOSTS and HOSTS syntax pretty well! I had about 4-5 questions on these.

Know how SNMP works and know the security precautions you can take with SNMP. Read up on communities and traps.

Performance: Know when Network monitor is required and when Performance monitor is required! I had about 5-6 questions on these.

You should be comfortable with DNS as far as how it relates to name resolution. Also be familiar with the different type of records contained in DNS. I did have 1 question on making an Alias... what type of record is this?

Here's the subnetting table the book taught me and I memorized it. Note, don't try to memorize it right away. Finish and understand the subnetting chapter first so you know what the numbers mean. That will make it easier to memorize the table.

Position Value 64 32 16 8 4 2 1

Subnet bits 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

# of Subnets 2 6 14 30 62 126 254

Subnet Mask 192 224 240 248 252 254 255

Host bits 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

Jas

5/6