CompTIA Security+ Rapid Review (Exam SY0-301) by Michael Gregg (Microsoft Press)

 January 8, 2013

This book is pretty short (258 pages long) but is very dense. It is divided into 6 chapters + one appendix.

For each atomic argument, the author does propose 1 to 3 True-or-False questions, their answer and the explanation. I did like the question-answer approach, since you understand immediately which is your level, therefore you can understand which parts you have to cover more and which less. What I did not liked at all about this structure is the layout. Every question is answered right below the question itself. I think this is a very bad approach, since is really hard to answer to a True-or-False question without looking at the answer that you know is there. I think they should have putted all the chapter questions and after all the chapter answers.

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).