Robert Gradante
Exam Cram: Routing and Switching Flash Cards is a set of paper cards, each of which contains a fact or question that's meant to help you prepare for the Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) Routing and Switching exam (640-507). Most of the cards have multiple-choice questions printed on one side and the answer (with a brief, somewhat helpful explanation) on the other. The multiple-choice format mimics the exam, but some learners might prefer not having options presented for drill--these people can cross out the answers with a marker and test their knowledge without help. Fortunately, also for these folks, the 50 "free-response" cards pose questions along the lines of, "Detail the five steps of encapsulation."
You could wish for heavier cardstock, but the cards are conveniently sized --approximately four inches (6 cm) by five inches (12.5 cm)--which is large enough to handle easily, but small enough that you can fit a few dozen in your breast pocket or all 250 in a corner of your briefcase. The cards seem well suited to an irregular study schedule, when you can snatch only a few moments now and then to prepare for your CCNA exam. They spare you from having to tote around a big book or spin up your notebook computer every time you want to review some facts. For good measure, there's a multimedia version of the flash cards on a CD-ROM that comes with the kit. --David Wall
Topics covered: The subjects you're supposed to understand to pass the Routing and Switching exam (640-507) en route to your Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) exam. Subjects include addressing, routing protocols, connectivity, the seven-layer Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model, and the basics of configuring Cisco devices.
1 Some of these cards need to be corrected
I am quite shocked at how many obvious errors there are in the CCNA Routing and Switching Flash Cards that I just purchased. A number (ten or more) of them have very egregrious errors. Example: a question for which none of 'answers' in the selection of answers are correct. Example: a question that starts out "GRP is a distance vector protocol" when it should be IGRP. Example: Question about an access-list 179, but the supposedly correct answer shows access-list 155. Example: question about subnet mask of 255.255.255.240, how many host id bits are there on this network? Answer selections are 28,6,10,8 (correct answer is 4), and is not even listed, but on back of the card lists answer c (10) as the right answer, but does list a correct narrative that says 4.
There are more examples that I won't inflict on you. Didn't anyone proof read these for correctness? It makes it quite difficult to take the rest of the cards seriously, as there might be other wrong answers that are not as apparent as these ones. I trust that Coriolis will correct these errors and republish them, however, when I checked their web site today, there were no errata listed.
2 CCNA 2.0 Flash Cards
This is a good study tool, but not a study guide into itself. After taking the CCNA 2.0, alot of the subject material was on, with the execption of the switching/bridging questions, which is why I am giving it four stars instead of five.
