MCSE Windows 2000 Network Infrastructure for Dummies (with CD-ROM, covers

Rating:
Summary: A good starting place but not a one-stop shop
Review: This book is a great place to start your preparations for exam 70-216 but there are some gaps. In particular, there is very little on sub-netting, a subject that you need to know in some detail for the exam. My advise to anybody contemplating taking this exam is simply to memorize all the Class B and Class C subnet values (incl. masks, #subnets & #hosts/subnet) and do a "brain dump" on to note paper as soon as you get in to the exam room. Then you can easily solve most of the subnetting problems the exam may throw at you. The test questions both at the end of each chapter and on the CD are a useful tool to check your knowledge and understanding of the chapters themselves but they don't really prepare you for the exam itself. The sample test questions on the CD concentrate heavily on your knowledge of dialogue boxes (which option would you select from the menu to configure...etc.) where as the actual exam didn't have a single question on this kind of thing. I would strongly recommend using this book in conjunction with 3rd party tools from SelfTest Prep or Transcender to give you a better overall understanding.

Rating:
Summary: A great review book for 70-216.
Review: To start with I have not taken the 70-240 test yet so it is hard for me to comment on exactly how this book will prepare one for the exam. This is my first ever Dummies book and I am impressed for the most part. However I have a hard time believing this book by itself will prepare you for the exam. To be fair the author says you will also nee a LOT of hands on experience and other references including such as Tech Net and Resource Kits (a book I believe). The good news is that this book is NOT for dummies. It is very well written in an enjoyable style by a person who obviuosly knows his stuff. I have read Mastering Windows 2000 Server 3rd edition by Mark Minasi (very highly recommended) and the Syngress 70-216 book before this Dummies book by Glenn Weadcock. Glen does an excellent job on taking out the fluff and presenting the important stuff in an articulate, well organized, understable manner. I found the first seven chapters (dns,dhcp,wins,rras) particularly excellent. He has one of the best explanations on rras policy implementation that I have seen. I thought the chapter on routing was a little bit light on the differences between rip and ospf. The chapter on nat/ics was excellent except for little detail on how to map services/applications/ports/addresses to individual computers using these services. The chapter on ipsec was a pretty decent explanation on what can be a complex topic and the chapter on certificates was a great explanation of public key infrastructure and how Windows 2000 uses it with efs, the various types of certificate authorities and how to issue/view/revoke certificates. Interesting though is that there was no instuction on subnetting, supernetting, or cidr in the book? I think for sure you need to be well versed on that for the exam! Also I did not see a good explaination of the host name resolution process which is crucial to pass the exam and troubleshoot networking problems. The end of chapter questions were so so, while the 50 question end of book practice exam more challenging. Now the bad news - the enclosed cd rom has practice questions and an assesment exam. Well the I give the assesment exam a big ZERO! It generated a 80 question assesment exam and about ten questions did not even generate and one question repeated about 5 times. Plus the questions were mostly the "what tab do you use to do this" nonsense that is not going to help you with the real exam - I guess this is why Trancenders is so popular! Even with those gripes I still thought this book was worth my while to read as an additional study guide and is a bargain for the price.