Network+ this Friday

Aspiring

Hi guys,

Long time lurker but I decided to go ahead and make my first post. I have no networking experience and have been studying pretty hard for awhile now. I've read Tamara Dean's book front to back (I truly feel like I understand everything in there), watched Prof. Messer's videos, and taken tons of practice exams and scored very well on all of them.

However, I still know there's a decent chance I'll fail after reading how hard this test was, so I bought the retake option as well. I've been trying to find as hard of practice exams as I can in order to not feel overwhelmed by the test. MeasureUp has been pretty good (scoring around 80% there), I also found a website called aio********.com which has pretty difficult questions but I'm only able to answer correctly on about 60% of these.

So we'll see how it goes. I feel like I'm probably right on the bubble. If I fail, I'll be right back here to get some suggestions on what I could do differently next time.

Aspiring

Uh oh.

Since TechExams starred out that website, I did some further investigation and realized that it's a braindump site. Whoops. I guess I will have to find another resource. I had no idea.

PCTechLinc

It's good that you caught that afterwards and are looking for other resources. If you are ever doubtful about the validity of a site, you can go to certguard.com and look at their results for a particular site. I've found that a few are not listed, as they might be new, but you have to be careful about sites advertising that they are legit, when in fact they aren't. When in doubt, it may not hurt to contact the vendor (CompTIA, Microsoft, Cisco, etc.) and ask them if they are a qualified partner.

Thoth_Dhwty

Good luck! Be confident about it. You still have few days left. Do some exams and see which subjects you score the lowest and go through them again.

Aspiring

Thank you guys for the encouragement. I've been studying pretty hard for months, trying to learn everything the right way, and I definitely do not want to use any underhanded tactics in preparing for this exam. I'm just trying to practice whatever I can, since I've gone through my book and Messer's videos and feel that I understand everything fairly well.

Danielh22185

When I am at the point you are I feel it's best to move on with the exam. If you pass, great! If you fail then you know where you are and should have a much better understanding of what to touch up on.

Good luck!

P.S. Also glad to see you are doing it the right way!

NetworkNewb

Best of luck this Friday! I like to look through the exam objectives and make sure I can describe the topics in my head (Or out loud would probably even better) without looking anything up. Gives a pretty good idea if I know I'm ready I feel.

Aspiring

Thanks NetworkNewb.

So I didn't want to make a new thread but I have one of those CIDR block questions that seem unusual (This one was from MeasureUp). I thought I knew how to do these, I'm sort of familiar with VLSM, but this keeps saying I'm wrong and doesn't really give a detailed explanation. I'll keep it short

I have a master address of 192.108.112.0 /19

I need to segment this into four networks as follows. Question says to list the proper CIDR Notation for each. I got all these right and completely understand them.

Network A - 2100 hosts (Ans: /20)
Network B - 1000 hosts (Ans: /22)
Network C- 500 hosts (Ans: /23)
Network D - 750 (Ans: /22)

And then of course, the infamous "largest CIDR block remaining" question.

So I thought all you do was take your (original host addresses)-(all the host addresses you've used for your subnets) = (all the host addresses you'll need for your last subnet)

which is....

2^(32-19) = 8192 - (4096+1024+1024+512) = 1536 - 2 = 1534

The 4096, 1024, 1024, and 512 are the host addresses I've used for my four subnets. With 1,534 usable addresses left, I thought I had to go with a subnet that allowed for 2048 (2^11) since (2^10) gives us only 1024.

So with 2^11, my answer is /21 but MeasureUp is saying /22 without any real explanation. Did I miss something or is there a bug in this?

Mr.Robot255

@Aspiring


i aslo have measureup (exact same question )and the largest remaining blocks stump me too.

From my understanding a
/22 = 1024
and a
/21 = 2048

so with only 1534 available left a /22 is correct

but would like clarification from someone in the know pls as well.

Aspiring

Mr.Robot255 wrote: »

@Aspiring


i aslo have measureup (exact same question )and the largest remaining blocks stump me too.

From my understanding a
/22 = 1024
and a
/21 = 2048

so with only 1534 available left a /22 is correct

but would like clarification from someone in the know pls as well.

I'm not sure what the deal is, there are a couple of simulation based questions that have been buggy so I'm just going to chalk this one up as a mistake since I did a similar question the exact same way and got it right.

Oh well. I ended up passing the N10-006 last week anyway.

Mr.Robot255

hey congrats Aspiring

im booked for the 27th this month

after reading the forum im very nervous about it as i always am for exams

was it as hard as people are saying would u recommend any thing to really put time studying on?

Aspiring

Mr.Robot255 wrote: »

hey congrats Aspiring

im booked for the 27th this month

after reading the forum im very nervous about it as i always am for exams

was it as hard as people are saying would u recommend any thing to really put time studying on?

It seems as if you get a solid textbook (ex: Meyers All in One), watch the Messer videos, and then take plenty of practice tests (which you're doing) then you should have everything you need. I didn't have the best book but it was good enough. MeasureUp is a great resource so you're doing well there.

In terms of what to study, it's hard to say because they just draw from a huge test bank so you won't know exactly what you will see in depth. But definitely know your port numbers, wiring standards, and IEEE standards since those are all easy points. After that, I'd do what others here have suggested. Go through the CompTIA Net+ objectives and see if you can explain them all. If you can, there's not much more that needs to be done.

In terms of the difficulty, as long as you study hard, you should be fine. It definitely is hard but not any harder than MeasureUp. I can't get into too many specifics on what I saw but I guarantee you that you will see many "Layer 1 questions" where you don't have to think deeply at all. Either you know it right away or you don't which will give you confidence. Not everything is going to be a buzzsaw.

Also, just keep going even if you think you are bombing it. The reason I say that is because CompTIA apparently throws out beta questions on there which are likely too hard and won't be counted but they do it just to see if enough people answer it correctly in order to include it in the test bank for the future. For example, there were about five questions I saw that I had no earthly idea where to even begin and just guessed....those were likely beta questions and not counted as evidenced by my higher score than I expected. If you start missing a lot of Layer 1 questions, then it's time to start panicking.

All in all, it is definitely not as hard as a lot of the horror stories I've seen around the internet. I have zero IT experience and scored what amounted to an 87%. Best of luck! As long as you take it seriously, I think you'll pass.

Thoth_Dhwty

That largest block subnetting simulation I got wrong too on the exam -_-

Congrats for the pass. Whats next?

Mr.Robot255

thanks for write up

and well done again