Passed Network+ N10-006

Passed on Saturday with an 825.

Background (Copied from my first post)
20 years experience in the IT industry performing a wide variety of roles - system admin, consulting, developer, management. The last certification I held was for NT 4.0. I realized that I wasn't content with what I was doing and decided I wanted to get back to doing interesting things again. My goal is to move into a more security focused direction - application and network security, PEN testing, etc... I figured this cert would be a good place to start - both from a getting my head into studying and the objectives are similar in scope to what I have done in the past. I have a bit of journey ahead, changing directions, and want to wade into the waters at the shoreline rather than attempt to dive into the middle of the sea.

Study Material
Greg E. Clarke's - CompTIA Network+ Certification Study Guide, Sixth Edition (Exam N10-006)
Total Tester (came with Greg E. Clark book).
Darril Gibson's Get Certified Get Ahead Website - Practice Tests
CompTIA CertMaster
Boson Network+ Practice Exams & Simulator

Preparation
I wanted a networking refresher to see what I'd forgotten or pinpoint concepts I may not be familiar with as I'd been a while since I've been hands on with networking outside of design in my company's environment. Read the book, took lots of practice tests.

The test
My test had 90 questions, 87 multiple choice with 3 performance-based. The performance based questions were pretty straight forward, though the final one took a bit of thinking to figure out what you really needed to do and how to do it. The multiple choice questions, maybe 30% were trivia and the rest you had to think your way through scenarios. As with the Security+, questions are not clear and will require you to reread sometimes to be able to understand what is being asked. One question I had did have incorrect information in the question, but you could determine what they were asking, felt a bit disappointed about that. Know ports, troubleshooting, wired/wireless, CIDR - in other words - pretty much the objectives.

Thoughts and recommendations
Greg E. Clarke's - CompTIA Network+ Certification Study Guide, Sixth Edition (Exam N10-006) - The book didn't show up on a lot of lists but I figured I'd give it shot. He did the Security+ practice test book that I realized, after my Security+ test, would have been good prep for reading the questions that were similar to the actual test in ambiguity. Overall, I liked the books writing style, it's just a long book (so are all the others). I'm a slow reader with limited time so, at over 800 pages, it took me a while to get through it over December and the holidays. Overall, the book covers the concepts you'll need to know well, IMO.

Total Tester (came with book) - It's a lot like the actual exam, in question type and wording. While I wouldn't want to recommend it for accuracy or a great tool for learning. It will give you lots of questions to drill that are very similar in format and vagueness as the actual exam.

Darril Gibson's website - As with Security+, great resource. Do not expect the actual questions to be anywhere near these unless it's a trivia question or performance-based question (one of the performance-based questions was extremely similar to his). But a good way to ensure you know the material.

CompTIA CertMaster - It came as part of the bundle I purchased, it is way more in-depth than the actual test. It quizzed you on more thing than the test does. Maybe the next version of the cert will include these types of question? You can get some good out of it, just doesn't really pertain much to the current version of the actual exam. (It will give you 10 CEUs, once completed, so if you have other CompTIA certs you can use them for those)

Boson Network+ Practice Exams & Simulator - Way more in-depth than you'll need for the exam, no wonder everyone recommends them for the Cisco cert exams. Felt like a root canal when I just came for a cleaning . I may pursue a few Cisco certs in the future but this seemed like overkill for the Network+ exam. If you're scoring high with these, you'll definitely know your networking. The simulator...didn't even use. I gave up on it after it took 15 minutes to get in the first time. Maybe the next time would have been faster but I just wanted to drill some commands/command lines to cement what different parameter output looked like.

Finally, as in my previous post about the Security+ test, the best thing is to know the material as well as possible. When answering a question, be able to recite to yourself why an answer isn't correct or why an answer is correct. Carefully read the questions. You can get tripped up if you try to rush. Flag the performance-based questions and push through the multiple-choice keeping an eye on the timer.