Networking

Exam Ref 70-413: Designing and Implementing a Server Infrastructure by Steve Suehring (Microsoft Press)

 January 29, 2013

I come to this book less than a month after reviewing the 70-410 Exam Ref. As the title may suggest, this book is tailored to the preparation of the Microsoft 70-413 exam. Speaking of the exam, I have to advice that the book does cover any exam objective, but does not cover every exam question.

The book is split into an introduction, 5 chapters and the index. The first chapter helps to understand how to plan and deploy a server infrastructure. The other four are focused on the designing and implementation of the various components: network infrastructure services (chapter 2), network access services (chapter 3), Active Directory logical infrastructure (chapter 4) and Active Directory physical infrastructure (chapter 5). A thing I liked about this book is the presence of questions (with detailed answers). What is improvable for these question is the number. I think they should put way more questions. So, the questions, are a good idea not well implemented. The only thing I hoped to see on this book but is missing is the emphasis on the security.

CompTIA Network+ Training Kit (Exam N10-005) by Craig Zacker (Microsoft Press)

 January 1, 2013

Reading this book has helped me a lot understanding better how the networking works. This book is tailored for the CompTIA Network+ certification (and this led me to this book instead of another one, since I’m looking forward to take this certification.

I really liked the “structureness” of this book. After a brief introduction (Chapter 1) the book author analyzes the whole networking stack starting from ground up. The first chapters, in fact, are about Physical layer (Chapter 2), Data-Link Layer (Chapter 4) and Network Layer (Chapter 6). Then we find the Transportation Layer (Chapter 8) and the Application Layer (Chapter 9). We also find some really interested chapters like Network Devices (Chapter 3), Wireless Networking (Chapter 5), Network Security (Chapter 11) and Network Management (Chapter 12).