troubleshooting and the Net+ examination

headcase

Ok, I am down to the final stretch studying for the Net+ exam. I have yet to schedule for the exam, but I will be taking the exam in the near future. If the exam was today, I think I would have an excellent chance of passing. However, with the cost of the exam, I, like many others, want to make sure I will receive a passing score.

I have a great understanding of the OSI, topologies, TCP/IP, etc,. However, troubleshooting is a major part of the net+ exam and to be perfectly honest, I have yet to focus on troubleshooting. Anyone have any suggestions? If I have a great understanding of how everything works, should troubleshooting just come natural? Any good practice tests out there that evolve a lot of troubleshooting? Any help I can get, thanks

RussS

Have you read the tech notes and tried the practice exams on this site? I found them very helpful for Net+.

RussS

Whoops - hit enter on the wrong post
I also wanted to ask if you have some sort of test network to play around with? Not as critical as some other exams but is very helpful to try a few easy exercises and ensure that you are familiar with things like netstat - nbtstat - arp - nslookup - ipconfig - ping - traceroute - pathping and a few others. I feel that it is very important to know what each screen looks like and the various command options and syntax. I guess at the end of the day most troubleshooting involves these various utilities.

headcase

Russ,

Hey, first off I would like to thank you for all of your input on this thread and the others. Unfortunately, no I don't have a test network. I was thinking about getting an old computer and setting up a network at my house.

Yes, I have read all of the technotes and have taken the practice tests on this site. I think I am just being paranoid about the entire exam. I Would most likely pass the test if I took it tomorrow.

RussS

What I did was borrow a couple old boxes and set them up with my main machine as the server. Using a KVM switch I was able to fire them up one by one and just work from the one I wanted to play with after they were all up and running. A couple removable drive bays allowed me to have DOS, W3.1 (dont ask), W95, W98, ME, W2k, XP, Linux and Netware all running at fifferent times and in different configurations - most helpful.

headcase

russ,

I have to be perfectly honest. Some of the stuff you mention is over my head, although I have an understand of the things you are speaking of, I wouldn't be able to implement it without some additional research, nor do I have the software. I have never setup a network. Any advice on setting up a network using two PCs at home? However, I doubt I would even need to do so to pass this net+ exam, but i want all the practice and hands on experience I can get!

thanks again

headcase, lol

bellboy

seriously, a home network will help. it doesn't have to be a big one - i had a couple of p1 computers connected with cross-over cable. it's the only way to experience tcp/ip utils.

Wyldstar

A home network can be nice for Net+, but I don't think it's vital. You can run most of the commands you need to know over an internet connection (tracert, ping, etc) to familiarize yourself with the output of each. And most of the troubleshooting questions on Net+ are very simple ones with easily identifiable answers if you take a few seconds to figure it out logically (one computer can't connect to the network, but all others can - must be NIC or patch cable.. that kinda thing). If you can identify easy points of failure like this, you should be fine. Good luck on the exam!

- WS