Networking Essentials Exam Guide [With Includes an Initial Skills Assessment Exam...]

FYI, Dan York wrote a second edition of this book that was published in Nov 1999. He apparently updated the text based on feedback from readers and to correct some errors in this first edition. The new book is softcover and the ISBN is 0789722658.

This book is the only resource that I used in preparing for the Network Essentials 70-58 exam, and I passed the exam. Dan York does an excellent job of taking technical material and describing it in a very easy to read, down to earth format. The book is well organized and well written, and it not only prepares you for the test but also helps you to learn the technologies involved with computer networks.

I read this book, the one from Sybex, and the one from Microsoft Press before taking the test. I must say this is simply the best book that covers Networking Essentials. The amount of material covered isn't necessarily more in this book, it's the way that he explains it. There are superb examples and real life scenarios. There are minor errors, but there's a webpage up that has all the corrections. I took the test this week and was ecstatic to score perfect with 1000/1000. Much thanks to this book.

When I first went looking for an exam prep book, I spent almost 2 hours looking through all the different one. I had finially narrowed it down to this one or the Sybex one. I was hesitant with this book because of the price. However, it just looked so much better than the others. After reading it and doing the test question, I felt very confident when I went in to take my exam(first exam ever). I scored 823(792 was passing). My only complaint was that with the questions, they are divided into 3 sections: General Assessment, Chapter Exams, and a mastery assessment. There were a lot of repeats between the different sections, in fact the answers were in the same order, which became difficult to not memorize the question instead of actually thinking of the correct answer. My suggestion in that between this book and the other free exam questions that can be downloaded from Microsoft, you should have no problem. As a side note, there were many questions in the book about ARCNet and Wireless networking(especially frequencies), I had no questions on my exam about those topics. And I did have a lot of troublshooting questions. Just a little FYI.

I've been increasingly impressed with this whole line of books, and this Networking Essentials offering is no different. All books in this series that I've read so far are laid out superbly - making reading the book strait through easy. Chapter ending tests confirm your understanding of each chapter, and then two more lengthy tests (98 and 134 questions) test your overall ability to pass the Networking Essentials exam