What excited you most about the material covered in this exam or cert?
I was really hoping to learn more about technology in general. Prior to studying for the exam, I had an interest in networking, but no real knowledge. I was excited to expand into something that was previously uncharted territory.
What did you learn that will help the companies and clients that we serve?
I have better fundamental understanding of networking in general. Now, when clients call in reporting network issues, I’m much more confident. I always feel like I have a responsibility to fix issues once I start them, but it’s much better having that mindset, when you understand what might effect what.
What was the most difficult part about the exam or the exam preparation?
I think the concept I struggled with most was routing and routing protocols. It can be hard to remember specificities of all the routing protocols.
What topic or principles were the most revealing or illuminating to you?
As simple as it is, probably subnetting. Before beginning to study, I understood that you could have different networks, but I didn’t really understand their importance. Segmenting networks is so important. It seems like every week there’s an article of a company that got hacked because their smart thermostat was on the same network as their servers, or something like that. It’s so important to segment networks and to restrict access where it’s not needed.
Anything else you want to share?
There were some concepts (such as subnetting) I ran into that I had a hard time understanding. These concepts seem convoluted and the learning methods seemed over-complicated. After I found the right method, it seemed so simple and obvious. There’s probably a lot of this in networking / IT in general. It’s important to find the methods that work best for you, because everyone learns in different ways.
Here’s a helpful playlist on Subnetting Mastery – https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIFyRwBY_4bQUE4IB5c4VPRyDoLgOdExE