Hi Robert (et al!)

Well, just killed number 5 (TCP / IP) with a 931 in 45 minutes! 58 questions, 750 to pass.

It was easy.

Resources

Sybex TCPIP Study guide (okay, not great)

Exam Cram (WOW)

Robert's house of high repute (thank you again)

Server, Enterpoop, Workstation, Net Ess previous studies (Major help -- a lot of the stuff was just a review)

DPEP online courses relating to the above (none were specific to TCPIP but they covered at least 60% of the stuff in the courses.) This DPEC stuff is cheap ($39 Canadian for access to 6months of 180+ online courses. www.cadvision.com/golearn for more info.

Actual study time

20 hours over one week - I wrote enterpoop last wednesday (Aug 12) and rocked it's world too.

My memories:

Holy troubleshooting batman. The first 9 questions were gimmies with regard to diagnostic utilities (PING, NETSTAT, NBTSTAT...) know these bad boys cold!

Scenarios : Eight of the unsightly buggers in 3 question blocks. You must know the interactions between WINS, DNS and DHCP - every one of the scenarios dealt with varying combos of the aforementioned.

SNMP : I had at least 5 questions on that little bugger. All gimmies if you know your stuff (sybex shined here)

Connectivity to UNIX boxes: know your printer connection stuff (LPR, LPQ, TCPIP print services/LPD...)

Understand DNS, don't get ridiculous however. Know your resource record types and what comes defaulted on the DNS server, what kind of server does what...)

Know your name resolution order of operations for each type (HOST v. netBIOS).

I used two dumb (but useful mnemonics)

HOSTS - Local HOSTS Does noone Want to Beget Last (Local name, hosts file DNS server, netBIOS name cache, WINS server, b-node broadcast, LMHOSTS file)

netBIOS - netBIOS WINS b Level HOSTS Daily (netbios cache, WINS, b- node, LMHOSTS, hosts, DNS)

Subnetting and Subnet masks: know 'em like a loved one. They are easy to ignore, but they hurt just as bad to miss.

Supernetting see above but not quite so crucial

Default gateways Know what they do and why - think about the connection issue - should the communication be local? if so and the gateway is being ARPed what is up with that?

Good luck to all and to all a good morning

Joe