Brief Book Review:

i-Net+ Exam Cram

By: Martin Weiss, Emmett Dulaney
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This book was the only one I used to study for CompTIA's i-Net+ exam. Overall, this is an excellent book. It covers the exam objectives well. It goes into detail to a good degree on most subjects. There are a few glaring errors to deal with, but you should be able to spot them.

The extra detail I mentioned does not end up being just boring facts, or concepts that you don't even need to know for the test. Sometimes they were helpful things like the RFCs that first defined one Internet standard or another. I loved this book for the way in which it went "in-depth".

You get coverage of all the main test objectives. There is enough material in this book to pass the test. This is an extremely important point when you consider the objective and recommended audience of the book! While some more obscure topics that may be encountered on the i-Net+ exam are not covered (such as complex web searching, BGSOUND and EMBED HTML tags, CORBA, and certain aspects of e-commerce), even in combination, these elements would not doom you to failure on the exam.

I would like to point out some of the corrigenda here, so you understand the errors in this book, and their severity. Chapter 3 contains an Alert that refers to the private IP address 172.16.45.1 as a Class A address twice!. In the sample questions of chapter 6, there are two errors. One where they listed the answer as D, even though the correct answer is C -- they even go on to list why C is right, though they labeled it as D. The other is a question that states "When a client issues a cookie..." though clients do not issue cookies, they are issued by the server.

That should give you an idea of what they got wrong, and you can judge for yourself if it is a serious issue to you, one bad enough to keep you from buying this book. For me, the errata seem like simple misprints. They are forgivable, however, the book will not score as high.

Of course, the book also contains the usual features of the Exam Cram series, such as: notes on how to register for the exam; details of cost, time allotted, etc.; test-taking tips for the specific exam; and a complete practice test at the end of the book.

In conclusion, i-Net+ Exam Cram is all a person with Network+ or equivalent knowledge and experience would need to pass IK0-001. It can be purchased for ~$20, and I think that is a fair price for the content. Mr. Dulaney and Mr. Weiss are good authors, staying to the point and throwing in extras that make you appreicate the book for being more than just a study guide (if I ever want to look up the rfc numbers for PPP, I know where I can find them). The book should be applauded for never venturing too far beyond its scope as well -- the worst example of that being a couple pages spent on subnetting.

All things considered, I award i-Net+ Exam Cram **** 4 stars out of 5 possible.

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