Passed last week, heres some thoughts.

Hello everyone. I passed the Network + last week, Yay for me!! I studied for months. I took a Network + class at my local college, as well as finishing up my studies with exam cram. I currently work in the I.T. industry. I have a pretty good idea of what is important and what is not. I focused my studying on what I considered important, and of course what I considered important was barely on the test, lol.

I believe that comptia may want to retool their testing in order to stay relevant And to stay respected.

Dont get me wrong, I am proud of my Cert. My employer is happy, they paid for it. But now they expect me to get my CCNA.

I can understand why they wanted to try to cover all bases, but some of those bases do not need to be covered anymore, maybe 5 years ago I could see it, but not now. Not in 2008. Has ANYONE ever seen an 10BASE2 LAN? RG-58? Where I work we only use 58 for DS3's.

Again I am very proud of my Certification, Its my first. Now that I have it I just wanted to voice some concerns I had.

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andygee

You need to know older technolgy i have learned, as it will rear its ugly head at some point in your career.

Your company may not use it but some places for basic functions will keep on using that old pc untill it drops down dead or explodes.

It is also useful imo to know how things have changed and how as like most things everything goes round in circles a part for that technolgy maybe reused using new materials or breakthoughs.

human151

Trust me, Im not saying its useless. Network + has taought me the difference between 1000 Base CX and 1000BaseT or other such vital info. All I am saying is that they should remove the older stuff that will no longer be used such as 10base2, 10base5 etc... If some network admin is still running is network with thicknet, he should be fired on the spot. I do see the relevance for Novell, it is still in use (our local University uses it). I do see the relevance for the discussions on appletalk, OSX, linux, Samba, VNC, and protocols such as BGP, OSPF etc... But some of the things that are covered just dont need to be. I really could not care less about whether I could still see them. Would you really want to work for an employer who runs his netbios and a wins server rather than tcp/ip?

They probably still have oregon trail installed on their PC's too

But unlike some on these boards, I will say that the Network plus is worth something. ive been reading this board for the past hour and some have read complaints about network plus being worthless. Its not worthless, it exposes people to great information and provides a good solid foundation for your further studies.

dynamik

What if you had a 30 story building that was wired with thicknet? Would you suggest that they spend an insane amount of money to re-run all the cabling just because? Would you turn down a job because that's what they used on their network? Just because networks aren't being created like that anymore, doesn't mean they don't exist. I agree that it's ancient material and not commonly used, but you never know what you might find yourself working on.

What have you have a critical application that requires NetBIOS and the vendor is no longer around? NetBIOS hasn't been needed for a long time, but it's included for compatibility reasons.

The CompTIA exams are updated every so often. I'm sure this older material will fall by the wayside as the focus shifts to wireless and other new technologies. Even Oregon Trail has gotten an update.

human151

trust me, I see your point.

As for me personally, I would not work for an employer who used thicknet. I think it would be detrimental to ones career. say you do work for the employer with 10base5 and then you want to move on to something better. You find an employer with open positions. The potential new employer has a fast E network over utp. Is you experience with employer "A", with outdated technology, going to help you get the job with employers "B" with Fast Ethernet?

I doubt it.

dynamik

Nor would I. That doesn't mean either of us never will though. You could spend most of your time in a brand new state-of-the-art facility, but you might also have to occasionally support some rinky-dink little satellite branch that no one really cares about. You may also be a contractor. They tend to make great money and are usually working with cutting-edge technology. However, you may have to provide support for one of your client's ancient networks as well. The only point I was trying to make is that older technology is still in use, and because you may come across it, it's good to have a basic understanding of it.

Flexibility goes a long way in this industry. No one wants to work with antiquated technology, but outright refusing to work with it under any circumstance may limit your options.

BTW, welcome to the forums and congratulations on the pass

human151

dynamik wrote:

BTW, welcome to the forums and congratulations on the pass

Thank you sir.

andygee

Well done on the pass and i wish you well with your future career. Im just putting another point of view and passing on what i have learned working in the tech market since the 90s.

With a recession looming in the US, you may find the choice of where you work is not there.

If like dynamik says they have a factory floor or archive which has a old but all that is needed network installed. But it will cost more to up date than what would be considered practical, would you tell your director it has to be upgraded or i will walk?
If the director said ok upgrade it you would need to understand how it worked and what it was capable of to help you upgrade the kit. Sure you could look it up but then thats the same with everything i guess and there would be no point to the exam.

As well as cutting edge technology where a lot of the money is, is working on older kit which no one else will or can. One day on your CV/resume you will be boasting of your knowledge of older systems and technologies as it will help you impress your prospective employer.
Many old engineers prefer older technology they know it well its tried and tested and saves a lot of hassle upgrading.

I work in London and some of the richest companies in the financial area known as the city use antiquated systems/equipment and they work. They also use some of the most high tech equipment as well. But most importantly its where the money is. Im sure the same is true in America as well.

Nearly all I.T study books and exams never quite keep up with the latest technology, but neither do most companies in my experience particularly in a recession upgrade as quickly as technology is produced. Many companies that have the latest kit due to the outlay have to cut back in other areas like wages.

charliepaul

"The normal company execs only care about 3 things; their stock portfolio, company profit margins, and the company's worth. What they do not understand or care about is network infrastructure, outdated servers or staff computers. From a CEO's viewpoint these items do not make the company money and are nothing more than a depreciating asset. Assets are how a company measures it's worth. Typically, computer equipment depreciates and loses it's net worth after 5 years and is no longer reported as an asset or value to a company's bottom line. If anything, computers take away from a company's value because they are expensive to procure and maintain and must be continually upgraded by expensive technicians. If that is not enough the so called Y2K scare and the expense that led up to the tech stock collapse made corporate heads even more critical. So unless you can show how buying new equipment is going to save the company money, you had get used to field stripping a PC, gutting it and swapping out parts from another machine."

brad-

The knowledge learned from the study materials was worth my time. No doubt. However, the test did not even come close to being relevant to the study materials.

Like you, I am proud of my cert...but I was left with a bad taste in my mouth after the test. Even though I knew alot of material cold, the exam was left field and irrelevant to almost all of my studying.

My only guess was that they thought the N+ test was too easy in the past, or maybe too many people were passing...nobody knows...but they made the test un-necessarily tricky and off topic, in my opinion.

As for the older technology...eh...I've always thought, if i don't know this or that standard, I can go look it up. Ive never understood the need to memorize the dozens and hundreds of cabling standards for length, throughput, connectors...particularly fiber. Honestly, you can figure that stuff out very quickly on the job. I dont think its essential to know for an entry level cert.

IMHO, I think it should have focused more on wireless, topology, subnetting, troubleshooting, hardware, and the popular cable standards. I may have left something out there, but you get the idea.

Gettinpumped

so what was mostly on the exam. Im currently studying for it.

Plantwiz

human151 wrote:

Has ANYONE ever seen an 10BASE2 LAN? RG-58?

YES!

So what's the point? Because you haven't seen these items in actual use, this exam is pointless? If you work for 1 company, maybe it is pointless and you've just wasted your time. If you consult on various sites there is no telling what you'll find AND how 'silly' would you feel if you walked into a client and they said, "Hey, what's this cabling? Do you think we can get rid of it?" What is your response? "Maybe?" or "I don't know...never seen it before, so probably you can?". Sounds real professional, right? NO.

CompTIA exams are meant to cover a broad general basis of knowledge. If you want more specific and more pertinant exams then you should look into the MS and Cisco exams. These will be more specific to the applications you'll likely find in your environement (that is if you select exams that are in the areas your work with.

***

And congratulations on passing your exam.

Magnum2544

I couldn't agree more

iowatech

Like you, I am proud of my cert...but I was left with a bad taste in my mouth after the test. Even though I knew alot of material cold, the exam was left field and irrelevant to almost all of my studying

Indeed.

danz9370

human151 wrote:

Hello everyone. I passed the Network + last week, Yay for me!! I studied for months. I took a Network + class at my local college, as well as finishing up my studies with exam cram. I currently work in the I.T. industry. I have a pretty good idea of what is important and what is not. I focused my studying on what I considered important, and of course what I considered important was barely on the test, lol.

I believe that comptia may want to retool their testing in order to stay relevant And to stay respected.

Dont get me wrong, I am proud of my Cert. My employer is happy, they paid for it. But now they expect me to get my CCNA.

I can understand why they wanted to try to cover all bases, but some of those bases do not need to be covered anymore, maybe 5 years ago I could see it, but not now. Not in 2008. Has ANYONE ever seen an 10BASE2 LAN? RG-58? Where I work we only use 58 for DS3's.

Again I am very proud of my Certification, Its my first. Now that I have it I just wanted to voice some concerns I had.

just my opinion..

my cousin is a CCNA certified and i am a CompTIA A+ and Network+ certified he keeps telling me that there's no point of getting a network+ because he is already a CCNA, i told him that CCNA is not a networking.

CCNA is product specific and it does not make you more knowledgeable in the field of networking. CCNA can be passed by studying hard the cisco ios or with the simulation but network+ is not.

he keeps arguing with me how his CCNA cert is better than the Network+, So i showed him a BNC connector with a 50 ohm resistor and i asked him what is it for? his answer was it is used for an *antenna or something*. when i heard it, i can't stop laughing.. infront of me is a CCNA certified who hasn't seen a BNC terminator, the point is.. network+ is geared towards your general knowledge in the networking field both old and new technology, any product specific certification such as the ms or cisco cannot be used to measure one's understanding about the networking.