I'm James Messer, and you're listening to the Professor Messer in 10-009 Network Plus Study Group After Show. This after show was recorded on January 15th, 2025. If you'd like to watch a video replay, visit my website at professormesser.com. Just before we started this live stream, there was a doorbell. There was a knock at the door.
Literally, not of the studio, but at my house, at the studio. My studio is at my home. And there was a box waiting for me. That box was one that was sent to me from the good folks at YouTube. And they have sent me... This gold plaque that says presented to Professor Messer for passing 1 million subscribers. Can you believe this? I cannot believe this. So I am just in awe of all of you. And we are so proud of this particular...
plaque. This is more of a representation of what you have been able to do for this channel than anything that I have done. So one of the things you may have even noticed as we've gone through these years of making these videos is I don't really make a lot of YouTube type videos. So what I mean by that is I'm not getting you a video on the latest and greatest news that's in the industry. I try not to make videos that have.
this very odd title and a clickbait. That's not really what we're about here. We're trying to do something a little bit different in the industry. We're trying to do something that is a little bit... out of scope. Pardon me just a moment while I put that back. We're trying to do things that are a little bit different. And so...
We use those numbers that we see on YouTube. We look at our subscription numbers, of course. We look at how many views a video is getting, of course. But instead of using that as a way to see... can we get more can we get more can we get more it's more of a way that we're able to tell are we doing the right thing so we are so proud of what we have done with this i'm very proud of this plaque
But it's more of a description of where things have gone, how we have been doing things, and where we've gotten to. In a way, it's just the beginning. I know there's other plaques that are in the future. I think if you get to 10 million, there's a diamond or a platinum or a shiny something. I'm not really trying to get a bunch of plaques. What I'm trying to do is make...
videos that people can use to get a job or get a better job. I've been in the IT industry. I worked my way from the very bottom in IT and worked in field service. I worked on the help desk. I did. workstation administration, network administration, security administration, protocol analysis, network management, and ultimately next-gen firewall systems engineering. It is a field where you can do anything you want, however you want to do it. There's so much flexibility in the world of IT.
So how do we get people involved and get them into this amazing world that not only provides you with a challenging job, something you can really enjoy, but it also pays quite nicely. and is able to give you and your family the things they need. And I think that's probably the biggest hope that we have for you is that you're able to take this information and really supplement it.
add to it, and continue that process throughout your career. That's what we are focusing on. So we're super proud of the plaque. It is going to go up on the wall so that we know that it's there. It's not something that we're going to rub our hands on every day and say, thank you, plaque for what you've done. This is really something you have done. We're just going to keep making videos and keep doing what we're doing so that you will continue to have these resources available and continue to.
grow in the world of IT. So with that, thank you again for that. It was something that is not something got by me. It's not something I'm missing. It really is thanks to you for that. So I can say thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you so many times, and we really do mean it. So thank you so much for all of that support. Let's do some more.
q a but this time let's have you ask the questions of me so i'm going to my q a board back here we're going to go through the questions that you have submitted and see if there's some questions that we can do on here. So a lot of you were asking, this is a big question that comes up from time to time. So I want to at least, it came up even in the chat room very recently.
So let's focus on this question, kind of get it out of the way. I'll give you my perspective of what we're doing here. So at least you have an update of where things are going. This is from Big Chuck. Hey, Big Chuck. What's up, dude? Big Chuck says, can't do the voice, got certified in A-plus last year, thanks to you. Going to get Network Plus certified this year. Good idea. Your A-plus practice tests were huge in helping me pass the exam. I was wondering.
along with many of you in the chat room, if we'll have Inten009 practice tests soon. No pressure. I understand how much work it is, how busy you are, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, so this is... This is probably goes into our frequently asked questions bin. This is one we get all the time because we do have practice exams book for A plus core one. We have a practice exams book for A plus core two. We have a practice exams book.
for the INTEN or the SY0701 Security Plus exam. And then we don't have one for Network Plus. It is a glaring omission. Where is it? And when are we going to get it? That is probably one of the most valid and timely questions you could ask. And it's a great question because... We need one. We have this philosophy here with our content, with our training materials.
We know how important these certifications are. We take them very seriously. Not everybody in the world takes certification seriously for whatever reason. They have their reasons. We don't have that philosophy here. Our philosophy is this is... a game changer. This is a career changer. This is a life changer. This is your career. This is your family. This is your relationship with other people in your family. This goes well beyond the scope of technology. And because of that.
Each one of the training materials we create, we consider to be incredibly important. We do not skimp on anything. Our goal is to make the highest quality training materials we possibly can. We want them to be the most accurate. We want them to apply. 100% to the existing exam objectives. We want them to be timely. We want them to be credible. We want them to have some application in the real world. Crazy talk. I know.
it's important that when we create something like course notes videos practice exams or anything else that it really is something that is valuable not just from a technology perspective but it's also very accurate This is an important part of what we do. It's a watchword of how we work. Not everybody creating content is this way, unfortunately. But we're not following their lead. We're doing things the way we want to do it.
So back to where's your, okay, enough of that. Professor Messer, where's your practice exams? The answer is, and when are they going to happen? When are you going to have them? We would love to make some Network Plus practice exams. We are. I have outlined exactly what I want to put in the Network Plus Practice Exams book. It's really a time motion study issue. It is all about the number of hours in the day.
And although that is a project that we know we want to complete, it's not something that's going to happen in the next three months. But it's very possible that this year you will finally see. a network plus book. That is our goal for this year. I had to set a set of goals for 2025. That's on my list of goals. Now that doesn't mean it's going to happen because sometimes life gets in the way.
But I'd really, really like to get one for Network Plus. I really would like to have one. I think they are valuable tools. I think we can use them in our study groups. I think people can use them to plan and study for their certifications. One of the things you've probably seen with our A-plus and our Security Plus practice exams books is that we design them to have a very common look and feel to the actual exam experience.
Not actual exam questions, because I write all of the questions original. These are not situations where you're doing anything unethical or something that would get you in trouble. I write these all as... original question so you know there's no problem there the part that is important though is the questions need to have
something familiar about them when you go to the exam. They need to have a similar context. They need to have a similar tone, a similar style to actual exam questions. And that's what we try to focus on. So we don't have practice exams. questions for Network Plus at the moment. We do plan on creating some, however, and I think it's going to be a banner day when I'm able to get those done. I'm really looking forward to doing and I almost said starting the book, but...
Technically speaking, I've already started it. It's really more about finishing it at this point. And I got to tell you, that's the hardest part is the finishing part. So we are looking forward to getting that done. Networking, it was a big part of my career. It was a massive part of my career. I have been in some of the biggest data centers in the world with some of the biggest companies doing firewalls.
of network analysis, looking at their protocols, understanding the traffic flows on their networks. Networking is right in my wheelhouse. So I'm looking forward to creating it probably just as much. I wouldn't say more. than most of you but certainly just as much i would love to see that available so that's that's some of the inside baseball some of the plans of things that we're looking at on this side maybe that gives you an idea of when you can get that
I realize for some of you, you'll already be done with your Network Plus by the time that's released. Timing is everything, as they say. So we're working on it. We're trying to get there and trying to get something out. But it is an important part of what we are planning on. So thank you for asking the question. question. Hopefully that's giving you some idea of what's going on behind the scenes, but just keep an eye out for it. And don't worry, keep asking for it.
You're not hurting my feelings. You're not getting anyone upset by asking. There's nothing wrong with asking, reaching out and saying, what's the latest? I'm happy to provide that info. So thank you for the question. Other questions you have, we'll keep going through this list. A lot of great questions coming in. By the way, it's the link on your screen that you can use to submit a question at any time. Go to professormester.com slash QA. Feel free to have a look.
at submitting your question by using the tabs at the top of the screen. Let's keep going through this list. This is a pretty, this is a good question because it's one that comes up from time to time. This is from Alex who says, What application, software, or home labs would you suggest for someone to use or do while studying for the Network Plus? Now, this is...
This is probably that, for those of you that have been on our website before, on our live streams before, we have the Professor Messer Wrap Formula, the W-R-A-P. The Wrap Formula is one that... is one that should help you understand what resources would give you the best possible chance for passing one of these certification exams.
So each one of those stands for something. The W is watch. We want you to watch videos so that you can see someone performing these commands in real time. You can understand what the output of these commands are. A video training course is incredibly important. So that's your W. R is you need to read a good book. Books are able to give you information in a different way than a video.
And I think having that combination of the written form and the video form is a good combination. It's a good one to punch. So that's a W and the R. The A is we want you to apply what you have learned. We want you to get some. hands-on labs. We want you to pop open a browser window. We want you to do some home labs that really helps take the concepts you've learned in the lectures and from the book and really apply them. Because I really think that teaches you in a different way.
And then finally, the P is we need to practice. We need Q&A. We need some type of practice exams. Well, for Network Plus, I do still have options for practice exams. Don't worry. They're on my site. We just don't have a Professor Messer. practice exams book, but maybe we can make that happen. Maybe if you're watching this on replay a year from now, this will no longer be an issue for you. Just check the website and you'll know for sure. So the third one in that WRAP, the A is apply.
Apply what you have learned into hands-on labs, working at a home lab, or doing something like that. So this fits into that particular part of the formula. I think there are a lot of different things you can do. At a bare minimum... You can use the exam objectives. In fact, let me pull up the exam objectives so we can have a look at these. And if I scroll to the
Back section, section five, the network troubleshooting section of the exam objectives, section 5.5. Let me go back to that page. I should probably put this up so that it is a scrolly, scrolly thing. There we go. And we can really move it back from here. We go down to section 5.5. It says, given a scenario, use the appropriate tool or protocol to solve networking issues. And in this list, you could see there is a list of software tools.
hardware tools, and basic network device commands. So all of these can be used for that application, that applying what you've learned type of the formula. So we've got Protocol analyzers. So there's a software tool that would be great to install. Protocol analyzers, they're relatively complex devices. There's a bit of a learning curve getting into a protocol analyzer.
You can probably learn how to capture data from your network and display those packets on the screen relatively easy. It's a click to capture, click to stop the capture and display. The problem is... interpreting what you're looking at on the screen as I mentioned part of my career was working for network general and network associates as someone who's as a systems engineer where all I did every day was work with
network analysis tools looking at the packets and so protocol analyzers are incredibly valuable so one of the great parts about our modern world is you can download Wireshark for free Install it on your device, whether you're running Windows, Linux, or macOS. There's a native version of Wireshark you can install right now, and you can start capturing data from the network.
Now, why is this useful? Why would you ever want to do a packet capture? But one of the things is if you're trying to understand the flow of traffic, how traffic is getting to one machine, how it's getting back to you, it does show that at a very... easy to understand level. You're able to look at MAC layer information, IP layer information, TCP and UDP layer details, and the application itself.
It's effectively a graphical view, an easy to understand view of the OSI model in action. And if you have those decodes, you can now start getting into it to understand, oh, that's where the port number. comes from that's why it's important it's right here in the packet you can see the port numbers listed you can see the ip addresses inside of the packet you can see the mac addresses going back and forth and if the application is in the clear
You can see application level communication occurring. You can see timestamps so you can understand when you sent this traffic and you can understand exactly how long it took to get that first packet back from the server. That's important details because as a network professional, one of the main things that you will hear is that the network is slow. Something is slow. It's probably not the network, but something is slow.
But you as the network professional, because if you have a network cable, this is not a network cable, but if you had a network cable and you're looking at this cable and you're thinking, all right, where's it slow on this cable? Can't see it. There's no way to know.
And because there's no way to know, it's the first thing to blame. That's why people will always open a ticket and say the network is slow. Well, they're just guessing because they could see a screen in front of them. The screen isn't slow to their knowledge.
So it must be everything going over that wire. That's your problem. And so your protocol analyzer can tell you quite a bit about how the application is performing, how the server is performing, what the response times are. Are there any errors? Are there any communication inconsistencies or inefficiencies? You can see all of that in the protocol analyzer. That will be a day of your time. That is a great thing to learn. In fact, the more you learn about the protocol analyzer,
I've often explained it to others because you're really looking at what's happening inside of the matrix. You know that screen where all of the text is in green and it's going up the screen. It all looks like weird text. But whoever's sitting in front of that screen can see what's going on. They can interpret that data to you. It just looks like a bunch of stuff on a screen. They're able to see it.
Same thing really does apply to a protocol analyzer. Once you start really understanding it, there's a flow to the communication. You can almost pick things out very easily. just by looking at the screen. It is quite a set of skill. In fact, the more skilled you are with a protocol analyzer, the better you're going to be as a network professional because you'll be able to see everything.
If somebody asks about how fast is the response time? Where is the slowdown? I can see it right here. Here's the protocol decode. I took a capture at the user's workstation. I took a capture at the server. Let's look at the numbers. Because the packet capture doesn't lie. That's a great one to do. Another one you might want to consider doing is running something like a packet tracer.
Packet Tracer sounds like a similar thing. It's actually a tool made available by Cisco as a Cisco learning tool, but it can also be used as a very generic network learning tool. I would say Packet Tracer is probably a little out of scope.
It's a lot out of scope for the Network Plus exam. But if your goal is to become a network professional and do a lot more with switch management, router management, and network design and network troubleshooting, that's a very useful tool to become familiar with. So Packet Tracer is also free. You do have to register. I guess it's register where? You have to register on the Cisco website, but that registration doesn't cost anything. They don't make you...
submit any information or give a credit card or any nonsense like that. You just give them your information. Make sure you use a name and email address that's correct because they're going to send you messages back. And you have to create a login because when you log into Packet Tracer, it's what you're looking for on the Cisco website. So that's your Google Cisco Packet Tracer. That's a great one to download.
It also has a very high learning curve, probably even higher than a protocol analyzer in many ways. But it is a useful tool that allows you to build a network of devices and send data across that network. You can even do kind of a bullet time. You can stop time. with packet tracer and then watch the packet go from device to device to device to see exactly how it is changing as it goes through the network a fantastic learning tool
And somebody, in fact, we were talking about this in our Discord yesterday. And somebody said, well, it would be better if you had a physical switch and router, but Packet Tracer still is pretty good. I actually think packet tracer is much, much, much better than a physical switcher router because it is...
To anyone working on a switch or router, it has the same look and feel as working on an actual switch and router. It has very few of the commands are missing in there. And the ones that are missing, you will never miss them. The thing about Packet Tracer, though, is you can build out a network in a minute, make some changes, delete the whole network, and build it out in a different way in another minute. You can never do that with physical devices.
Because you have to go to the physical device. You have to unplug everything. You have to plug into your serial connection. You have to configure the device. There's so much you have to do on a physical device that slows everything down. Being in the virtual world of packet tracer can speed things up a huge amount. But also, as I mentioned, you have functionality that you don't have in the real world, like stopping time.
and watching the packet in slow motion, putting it through that step mode where you can watch everything as it goes through the line. A lot of fun with that. Packet Tracer, I could spend all day in Packet Tracer doing interesting things. But as I mentioned, a little bit out of scope for the network plus, but sometimes going a little bit beyond the scope can really help you bring everything back to understanding why switches are important, why routers are important and those types of things too.
That's a good one to work through. And yes, you're not breaking your own network. So that's good as well. That's always something good. You can test and try and experiment and plug and unplug and do different things. Turn off a router, see what happens. Turn the router back on, see what happens. You can create redundant links. You can break a link and see if it works.
So many great labs you can do in there. That's another one you might want to do. And then thirdly, if you want something that's more real world or something that's right now in front of you, that's not a virtual world, you're not capturing things that are already happening.
Maybe you want to build your own firewall with your own firewall rules. And there are some great open source firewalls out there that you can use. Pardon me, I missed my... mute button there i have a new uh a new uh audio configuration here and i just have a button right there that would stop that well it's not there anymore so now i knew i need a new button
So one of the things I say is get an open source firewall, get PFSense. There's other open source firewalls out there you might use, but PFSense, I think. probably is one that is so well supported, not only on different websites, but from different development, from a different development perspective as well. Build your own firewall.
Plug in and work with your own PFSense firewall because PFSense has IPS functionality. You can add to it. There's plenty of reporting built into it. You can have the firewall rules there. One of the things I often tell people, and an important part of this, is when you're building out these home labs,
you are effectively creating stories that you're able to tell when you finally get to the point where you're interviewing. So telling a story about the first time you installed Wireshark, you plugged into your... internet connection, maybe even plug into the internet connection on the outside of your firewall, and you're watching attacks occur in real time to your firewall interface. Those are great packet...
Captures, by the way. In fact, it would be great to have those captures in some form that you could show someone when you go to that particular interview and they ask you, what is a... challenge that you had with troubleshooting a network? What is something interesting that you're able to find on your network?
Having that packet capture and say, look at what I see. Here's a bot that's doing this. Here's a worm that's on the network. Here's a capture. Here's a packet that describes that. That's valuable. Same thing with building out your firewall. Well, I built my own PFSense. I plugged it into my network and I had it start reporting on every attack that was coming in on the internet side that was being blocked before it got into my local network. Look at this report.
Now you've got a report that you could show in an interview. These are great stories. And who wouldn't be interested in seeing, well, let's see who's attacking you. Let's find out. And here's the report. Well, I got this many attacks of this. The second I plugged it in, I got 100 attacks doing this. Here's another somebody trying to do an SSH attack. There's going to be plenty of attacks coming to your system. Trust me.
This is not going to be hard for you to create a report on all of these attacks that are inbound. Whenever I worked for Palo Alto Networks as a systems engineer, one of the things I would do would be we would go to a customer site and they were thinking, well, I don't know if I want this firewall or not. I said, well, let's plug it in, have it start collecting data, and let's go to lunch.
Cause I got to tell you, nobody likes having a sales meeting more than having lunch after the sales meeting. So that's, that was a big part of it. So we go to lunch, then we'd come back and we just spend 30 minutes. Let's look at what we gathered. I knew that we were already gathering information after five minutes. The lunch was just a bonus. But having the ability to go through
and instantly get reports on, here's how many attacks would have been blocked while we were at lunch. Here's how many people were using inappropriate software on your network while we were at lunch. And here's what they were looking at.
these were uncomfortable meetings sometimes sometimes a little embarrassing meetings sometimes and there have been a couple times in those meetings where they've said excuse me we'll be right back and they went off and the person who was doing that suddenly was no longer with the company just because we plugged this device in and went to lunch but that that's the reality of
cybersecurity and IT security in our modern world is that we need to be able to protect these companies. And if somebody is doing something that violates the terms of their user agreement with the organization. That is probably a career-limiting move. So all of that can be very valuable, being able to show those reports.
are something very tangible and it helps explain that you really know this technology you're comfortable with it and they're going to ask you did you run into problems installing it oh yes let me tell you about my problems The more you talk about problems, you would think that would be a... At first, you would think that would be a negative. Ooh, I don't want to talk about problems. No, I'm an expert in this. I don't want to tell people I ran into an issue. But the only time you ever learn...
Not ever, but one of the most useful learning features, things you will ever go through is troubleshooting a problem. And it's what you do every day. Very often, and you've probably been in an interview where they said, tell us about a time where you had a problem and what you did to resolve it. You should be ready. You should have that one in your back pocket. Oh, let me tell you about a problem I had installing PFSense.
And I installed it in Linux. I installed it in Windows. And I installed it in this system. And we plugged it in here. And it gave me this error. And we had to make a change to the networking configuration to put it on a separate VLAN or to redirect the traffic. You need to tell the story.
You need to tell how you broke it or you couldn't get it to work and how you fixed it. Nobody's going to look badly upon you because you did this. You're the one that got it working. You're the one that fixed the issue. Now, if you didn't fix it, you probably shouldn't talk about this problem. But that is a great story to have. And you should have three or four of these stories ready to go. Oh, you should see what happened the first time I plugged in Wireshark.
You should see the report I created the first time I plugged in PFSense. You'll never believe the problems I ran into just installing this to begin with. But we got through it, and here's how we did. Those are very, very useful things to bring to the table. Whenever you are in an interview, you're the one who has to talk. I don't know if you've thought this through yet, but the people doing the interview don't want to be talking.
They're going to ask you a question. You should just run with it. You should be in control of the interview. And one of the best ways to be in control is to have plenty of great stories to tell. Best ways to have stories is to build out some of these home labs. Hopefully that can give you some things to try. And maybe something, there's plenty more you can think of.
In fact, if you want to build out your own Active Directory infrastructure and connect a bunch of devices together and have your own DNS server configs and build out a separate DHCP configuration, there's another story. There's plenty of places you can go on the internets, on the YouTubes, and it will be able to walk you through a number of different scenarios. Find something that interests you and install it. Run it in a VM. See how hard it is to really get up and running.
And if you run into a problem, make sure you document it. Make sure you make a note of it so that you can tell the story about it later on. Let's keep going with the list of things. Thank you for submitting that question. That was a... That's a valuable set of things that can really get you through these very challenging interview situations. You need to be ready for those. Interviewing is its own.
We should probably do a whole series on interviewing. It's its own science. Just getting the interview, how you manage the interview, what you do after the interview. These are all important skills. And none of it is really technical. None of it has to do with your knowledge of protocols. None of it has to do with routers or switches or Ethernet. It all has to do with how you handle a particular situation.
And employers are looking at that. As someone, as a former hiring manager, that's something we definitely look for. We want to have a good interview with you. I've mentioned a number of times there's a... an SE manager I worked with back in the day at Palo Alto Networks. We were systems engineers for Firewall, but he would start the interview with a single question and ask, tell me everything you know about ARP.
Now, you would think that's a pretty short conversation until you start thinking about it. And of course, the address resolution protocol is important. What about proxy ARP? What about gratuitous ARP? What about inverse ARP? You know, some of these things we don't use anymore, but they are ARP-y. They are about ARP.
ARP is used in many different scenarios. When would you use that particular, when would you use a gratuitous ARP? It's a pretty important thing to know in the world of networking and security. We don't really talk about it. in Network Plus, I think we used to. Probably somewhere down the line, I recall creating content for Gratuitous ARP.
I just don't think I've seen it in the most recent versions of this. You'll certainly run into it in higher level networking certifications. But that was a great question, I think, because. Depending on how much somebody talked, if they talked about just ARP, then they have probably a very high-level view of networking. But if they then talked about proxy ARP, gratuitous ARP, well, okay.
They've probably done some redundant network configurations. They've probably done some natting. They've probably done VPNs. Because some of these ARP methods are used in those particular scenarios. And from there, you can start going different places. Well, tell me when you used a gratuitous ARP. Tell me what configuration you handled a proxy ARP. Tell me about... So you can really start going through the different scenarios there.
Tell me about an ARP. I've used ARP as a reconnaissance tool. How can you use ARP as a reconnaissance tool? I'm glad you asked. Let's talk about it. You know, so you could do an entire interview just on ARP and he knew that. And he wanted to see how deep somebody could get into those weeds because some of those technologies, especially on the next-gen firewall side, we use all the time.
And they are important for you to know. So it's a good way that he could sift out the right people and the wrong people. He could figure it out, start categorizing what people happen to know. So that was a good one, I thought. So again, get your stories together.
Get your knowledge of these technologies together. You may be asked about it in an interview. Okay, let's see if I can talk just a little bit more. We're doing great on time. We got a few more we can fit in here. Let's keep going through this list. and see what options might be available from you. I've got, since we talked earlier about continuing education unit credits, this is a question specifically about this. This is from Phil.
Phil says, just passed the A Plus Core 2 last month. Congratulations. Can I use the CEs from Network Plus and or Security Plus, these live streams, to use for my A Plus? Well, I'm not going to give you a quick answer, but I want to tell you where to go to get the answer for this one. So I'm going to quickly head over to the CompTIA website. Go to CompTIA.org.
And then you've got Chris Evans is right there on the main screen. There he is. I'm not sure who that was. Here's someone else walking down the hallway. So you've got these folks here at the very top of the screen is continuing education. There they are. The continuing education that's there has a lot of different options here. Why would you renew? What is the overview? How to renew continuing education fees, et cetera, et cetera.
Your question was very specific about, can I watch the Network Plus live stream and use those CEUs towards your A plus? So let's do this. Let's go to continuing education units. In here, you can see there's a lot here. You need 20 to renew A+. You need 30 to renew Network+. You need 50 to renew Security+. You need 60 to renew Pentest+.
and SISA plus, and they need 75 for the higher level security ones and the data X. Those are the expert level that have the X at the end of them. Everything else is the plus level. You're working up. You're getting there incrementally. And then finally, you're at the expert level. So you have worked on the... A-plus certification. This tells you how to earn the CEUs. And then they tell you the relevance. And this is the important text for the question that you asked. It says, at least 50%
of the course content must relate to one or more of the exam objectives for the certification that you're renewing. Let's just take that. So if you have taken the A+, you've earned your A-plus certification. Now you're watching the Network Plus live stream, our study group. And you know that I give out a Network Plus. one hour webinar category CEU. So the question is, did any of the content we went through during that first hour, did any of it or did at least 50% of it
relate to one or more of the exam objectives for A+. Well, one way that you could tell would be to look at the exam objectives. for a plus so let's do that real quick since we've done a little bit of exam objective things i've got my a plus exam objectives right here i thought i did if i click the right button i have my a plus exam objectives
Right here, nothing like doing a real-time breakdown. And in the objectives, I'm going to pull up the objectives for the core one. For this particular scenario, Anything in Core 1 or Core 2 would apply. So these are the objectives for the 220-1101, the Core 1 exam of the current A-plus version. And Section 2, aha, is networking.
Notice there's a whole list of port numbers. There is hardware, there's protocols, there's hosts. It looks like at least 50% of the networking content that we've talked about in that first hour of our study group applies to at least one of these particular exam objectives. So the quick answer for you, the very slow answer for you, for this particular question is...
Yep, we can absolutely use a Network Plus Study Group CEU and apply it back towards your A+, and that's why. So absolutely, you can apply that from the Network Plus Study Group and... Because, we'll do this again, back to the course notes. I'm going to go to the course notes. for the Core 2 exam. This is the other A-plus exam. Because you asked about Security Plus, guess what? There's a whole domain on security.
Our entire Security Plus study group is about security. And I guarantee you that we hit one or more of the objectives that are listed on the A Plus Core 2 in the security section. Absolutely, you can use those study groups. Both the Network Plus and the Security Plus study group also can be used towards the A Plus. So to renew your A Plus certification, not a problem at all.
The only thing that's important, and let me see if I can find this very quick on the CompTIA website, because they've changed this sort of recently. And I want to say this is right here on the screen that says documentation. You'll need to provide documentation for the following activities to receive your CEU. Now, what you are doing right now. is I believe it's completing training and higher education. I think we fit into that.
That category. And in fact, it does say attend a live webinar. That's what we are doing right now. I hate the term webinar, but that's where we live. That's how we are. That's what it's called. So one of the things that. they have recently said is that you have to submit the following documentation to receive CEUs for a webinar.
You need a detailed description slash outline of the webinar content. And you need a completion certificate or registration email containing your name, the name of the webinar, the date of the webinar, and the number of hours. We, of course, provide that in our... email that we send back to you. So you have that information. Also interesting is they say on demand webinars and YouTube videos.
on-demand webinars and YouTube videos. So this would be after the fact. This would not be live. This would be one, if you're watching this on a replay, this is what applies to you. These are only valid for CEUs if you can provide... proof of registration, or completion certificates. That's why I give you those super secret code words during the live event. And if you're watching this on the replay, you can perform that same set of...
processes I gave you during the first hour with the same super secret code word. You send me the same email. I send you back the same type of email registration. So this applies regardless. So I always tell people Just send me the information. I'll let me get an email sent to you. And then you always have an email that documents that you were here. just in case they happen to come back to you and ask for a little more information. Occasionally they will audit these to make sure.
that you really did attend that live stream. And having that email, not only documents that you were here, but I digitally signed the email. So you're able to verify that nothing has been changed in this email. Professor Messer really is the person that wrote this email and nothing in this email was modified.
It really did come from Professor Messer. He really does say that I was there and this really is a legitimate certificate. So that's a great way to certify that you were indeed here with just a simple email. So that's my recommendation to you. Make sure you do that. They're getting a little more particular about auditing. I've noticed lately, I'm getting a few more emails from...
folks in the field who are telling me that, oh, I submitted these and they sent it back to me. So that's a really good example of how we want to be sure that you have all of the right documentation so that you can renew your certification if you are indeed using CEUs for renewal.
Let's keep going through other questions that you have. Some other folks are chatting. A lot of good questions here, by the way. Of course, I'll remind you, you can submit a question anytime right here at professormaster.com slash Q. Lots here to go through. So this is, let's keep going through, since we're talking about certifications and how they work with CompTIA.
We've talked about the renewal process, but we've really not talked about the mechanics of the renewal process. Kara asks, is there a subscription fee that I pay for my CompTIA certs annually? If yes, do I pay for each certification? How does that work? Because you can imagine if you got the A+, Network Plus, and Security Plus study group, do you now have to renew all three of them to have this? Now, fortunately...
No. Your quick answer is thankfully no. CompTIA does not require you to have individual CEUs. I'm going to go back to the CompTIA website under the... renewal part there it is so for continuing education part rather and one of the things they talk about is why you need to renew and how you renew let's go to the learn about the renewal process I think it's there And it talks about how you renew this and what this is about. Now, fortunately, you only have to renew the highest level certification.
And then once you renew that one, it renews everything underneath. So if you have the A+, the Network+, and the Security+, I'm going to click on... No, it's the CE course. Let me go through the... completing an exam and getting through this. I think there's a section in here I've got to find for this other piece. But the important part is if you let's say you have all three of those certifications, you have the A plus, you have the network plus, you have the security plus.
All you have to do is renew Security+. Once you renew Security+, Network+, and A+, is all automatically renewed. That makes it easy. Makes it simple. You can focus your efforts on that one thing. which makes it very, very simple. So make sure you have a look at this entire section for continuing education on the CompTIA website. There's a lot of information here, I realize.
I mean, there's huge amounts of content here and you really have to parse it out. But it is valuable details. And if you are working to renew your certification, that can be an important thing to consider. Another question, this one's in the chat room. from Taylor who says, I've been actively studying, going through the course videos for Network Plus, but the older version, the N1008, well, now that the N1009 is the only version available, what's the difference between the two?
Well, I'm glad you asked. So if you go out to the Professor Messer website, here we are. And you go into the Network Plus section. There's only the N1009 on the main page. And you go to this section that says start your N1009 Network Plus studies here once you get through all the ads that pop up.
I give you a, this is one page that effectively lists all of the resources available for the N1009 on my site. So you've got a list of all those here, but at the bottom are a set of frequently asked questions. And one of those questions. is, Taylor, what are the differences between the previous N1008 exam version and the updated N1009 version? And I say, well, there's quite a bit that's changed.
And here is a link. I wrote an article on my site that details all of the differences between these two exams. You've got a... A chart that breaks down for you. This Gantt chart gives you an idea of when the N1008 was available and when the 009 was released and when we expect this to be however long to be available. But to your question, you were asking about what's changed. So if you keep going down, I have a view here.
What good is an article if you don't have a Venn diagram? So here is the N1008 exam. Here's the N1009 exam. And I break down for you a number, well, maybe too many statistics, but that's... That's how I work. So that is a breakdown. But if you really wanted more spoon-fed, here's what's really different. I tell you, here are all the topics that were dropped from the N1009. So I go through the N1008. Here's all the stuff that was removed from the N1009 exam.
Well, if they removed all that stuff, they had to add something, right? They sure did. What topics were added? Here's all the topics that were added or a big summary of the topics. 100% comprehensive view of this, but it gives you a very good overview of things that were added. So there's the list of everything added, broken out by domain. There you go. So that is, and then we give you an idea of where you can go to get the N1009 content. So if you're trying to break that down, it's on my site.
You could also Google what are the differences between the N1008 and the N1009 with Professor Messer, and it will take you right to this page. That will give you everything you need to know about those. I just finished one for the older network, or excuse me, Security Plus. I hope to have that one up this week. And the A-plus exam is changing here in the next number of months, probably the next quarter, next three or four months. So there will be an updated one of those same articles available.
for the A-plus as well. So hopefully that gives you something you can work on. If you were working on the Intent 008 and now you've got to shift gears. to the N1009, what is really different? Sometimes people will say, ah, there's not that much that was different. I say, oh, well, you might want to have a look at that one. You might want to put those two exam objectives next to each other, which is what I did. I have a...
big spreadsheet with every single exam objective. I looked through, was it dropped? Was it added? And then that's how that particular document came about as we just created the details of that all in this. this breakdown hopefully that gives you a perspective of what has really been changed was there really did anything really change if you look at some of the articles out there that i saw comparing the two
Oh, yeah, five or six things changed. No, how about hundreds of objectives changed between both of those. So it's important to know what those differences are. I realize that's very detailed. It's very down in the weeds.
We're trying to earn this certification. We're going to get into the weeds. So hopefully it's given you a perspective of that. I know we're at the top of the hour. Let's get through a couple more questions, though, because for some reason, my voice is still holding out. So I think that would be good.
This is a popular question. And let me kind of break down philosophy for you of what we do with this. This is from James who says, what is the success rate for those who take your course? Then go on to take the exam. Both Network Plus and Security Plus. Now this is, I would love to have these numbers for you. I, more than anyone, would love to have this information.
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, depending on how you look at this, I think it's fortunate I don't have these statistics. In fact, it is impossible for me to know this information. What kind of site are you running here? professor what kind of non you don't even know how many people take the course and then take the exam and if they're successful or not i don't i don't and that's because
I don't have a registration system. I don't put anything behind a paywall. I don't require you to sign up for anything. I don't keep sending you emails every day unless you want the weekly pop quiz question. I don't track you. That is kind of a watchword for what we have done so far. Maybe we'll change that in the future. Maybe. But I don't want to be blocking your process. I don't want to get in the way.
of you learning this information and if i was to put a registration process in if i was to track what you were doing that will require i at least knew what you were doing and how you were doing it when you took the exam if i required you to check in when you were taking the exam These are all blocking you from learning what you need to learn. And that was not the philosophy we wanted to follow when creating our...
courses, and creating our website. We wanted this to be as open and available as possible, even if it meant that we weren't going to get some of those metrics. I think those metrics are valuable. I think that if someone was interested in what we were doing and wanted to verify that what we were doing was good, that they would want to see that. But we also if I want to turn that around a little bit.
You don't need those statistics. If you want to know if our course is any good, go watch the course. It's free. You don't even need to register. You don't even have to give me a fake email to get a fake message to... on an email that you no longer use. You don't have to go through these horrible processes that sometimes you have to do just to get access to data. Instead,
You go watch it. That's what I tell people. How can you really verify this is any good? Because you can go watch it. Go. Go watch the first video. Then tell me, is that any good? And go watch the first video on... the overview of the course because I think that gives you an idea of our philosophy of what we are doing and how we are doing it and then go watch a couple of the videos
They're not very long. You can get a feel for the quality of the video, the quality of the audio, the quality of the content. You can understand, maybe watch some of the ones we're doing some demonstrations and see if you can follow along. There are ways that you can evaluate that. And indeed, many people like the course, watch the course. I get emails from folks all the time and they say, I watch your course. I took it. I passed. Thank you.
And I really probably need to do a better job of putting more testimonials out there when people do that, because that's some great feedback for all of you. I see it all the time. I think you should see it too. But the other thing that I think is useful. If you start looking at that, these are not our statistics. This is what other people are saying. So I think that's the benefit is that I don't need those particular statistics because you can already see.
the value because it's right there in front of you and nothing is preventing you from gaining access to those so that's what i would do and i some people in fact in chat room have even said and other people said before you need some formalized process to have people submit their their results and taking the exams right now the emails that we get that we do not solicit in any way um
And you're more than welcome to send them. I love reading them. I love getting the stories of your successes. Sometimes you send me a story where there's a challenge. How can we get over this hump? So here's some things you can try. And we have ways that we can maybe focus your efforts in different ways, different tips and tricks. We can try to get you more intel on the exam. What ways that you could evaluate the exam results when you get them. Those are important things as well.
But I think that if you wanted to know, is this a good course? There are plenty of people, not just look at the number of people on. This is another great example of how you helping us with our YouTube subscription numbers. Look at the subscription numbers. If it's good enough for a million subscribers, maybe it's good enough for you. But I also recognize that everybody learns in a different way.
Maybe my style of training course fits your style also. Maybe it is something you really like watching, but maybe you like the style of someone else. Maybe you prefer reading a book. Maybe you like all hands-on. It's up to you. So we're not telling you that you have to do anything. You don't have to absolutely do a particular.
tasks. You don't absolutely have to watch the videos if you don't want to. Find the tools that work for you. I think our wrap formula is a good one. Watch some videos, read a book, apply what you've learned with some labs. and practice with some practice questions. You could do all of that on the Professor Messer website. You could do all of that on another website. But it doesn't matter. Either way, just do those things.
That is your formula. With some people, they need all four of those different components in the formula. Some people only need one of them. Some people prefer two, maybe three of them. But you get to make that decision and you find the resources that work. best for you. And I think that's the best thing I can provide much better than any statistics, any metrics, any tracking that would be done.
I think that's a better and more real world approach to understanding if this is a course that really fits what you're trying to do. Let's keep going through this list. I have more, more, more to go through. Well, I know we're at the top of the hour. I don't have tons more. But maybe we can fit one more in here. Questions I got about N10-008 to N10-009. I showed that document that I had, the article I wrote with those differences. Great stuff in there.
Go back to that article. I think that's going to help you quite a bit. If you can't find the article or you're... Your Google Foo didn't work the way you were expecting. Just let me know. We'll figure it out. I'll point you right to it. You can always find it in our frequently asked questions on that start page for the Network Plus. And let's keep going out. Lots of good stuff. So many good questions. I can't even get through all of them this month. You're submitting so much good stuff.
uh let's keep let's keep going i know it probably half of these are where's the practice question so i'm sorry we're sort of skipping over those again uh and working through those making it happen okay um there's there's some good stuff in here you know this is this is probably a good one to go with we'll do this um in this view of thing one moment in this view of things
So this is from Don. And this is one that kind of hits me and many of us in the industry a little bit says, do you see a theoretical age limit to continue IT? I was the manager in aerospace that laid off last year due to budget. Sorry to hear that. Mind you, I'm now over 70. Is it prudent to continue seeking challenges? I suspect good chances of age discrimination at companies dot dot dot. This is really a timely question because many of us in the industry and many people I've talked with.
who are working towards certifications have different scenarios that they're going through. Some people are right out of school and they're working to get their very first job. Other people may be working in different verticals. They may be in transportation. They might be in healthcare. They might be in law enforcement. They could be in manufacturing. And now they think...
Let's move over into the IT world. It's something they've always thought about, something that's always impressed them, something that they've always interested them. So it might be a good thing to transition into. And this is not specific to IT. Anytime you make a change in your career like that, there are a number of challenges there. And one of those challenges is where you start.
in that particular market. So if you're coming from health care, you're probably not got a lot of technical knowledge under your belt. You probably don't have a good foundation to build on. So your first job in IT is probably going to be an entry level position. But if you've been working in maybe technical sales, maybe you've been a salesperson and you've been selling firewalls or switches or access points, there are people that's what they do.
in their world, you already have a pretty good knowledge of how all of these technologies work. You talk to technical people all the time. You are very familiar with the ins and outs of IT. And you're probably pretty comfortable with the language of IT. You know, you might be in an entry level position when you start, or you might be able to start a little bit higher to be able to kind of skip over the entry level part of things.
So there are some advantages and disadvantages for making that move. But there are, of course, financial advantages and disadvantages there, too. If you're moving from an established position... And now you've moved into IT. You may be starting at the bottom, and it may greatly affect your annual revenue, your annual income. So those are, of course, concerns. To Don's point about ageism.
age discrimination this is sort of a problem regardless of the industry doesn't matter what industry you're talking about um it's always a concern it's always an issue i wonder now Could I show up at a Cisco? Could I show up at a Palo Alto Networks and say, yeah, I'm ready to be your systems engineer? Would they really want me to be in that position? Because it tends to be a lower-aged demographic. So how do you compete at that level? Well, you compete with your brain. You compete.
in a different way you're not competing at the same level because you as someone who is now over 70 and been in aerospace You have a foundational knowledge of how to work with people that is very different than someone who's just starting in the IT industry. And if you're just starting in the IT industry, this is not a slight towards you in any way.
This is more about understanding the ebbs and flows of corporate culture, understanding a little bit more about how... politics work within an organization and those quite simply are skills you don't learn until you are in the middle of it until you've watched it for a while the other thing that we have going for us
if I can put myself in that category of people who've been in this industry for a while, one thing that you do have going for you is that you know people. This is probably one of your... biggest strengths. This is your superpower when it applies towards finding a position. Because you know a lot of people... in a lot of different areas. I bet you know people in the IT department at the aerospace company that you used to work at. I bet you know people in IT from
People at school, people at your kid's school, people at your grandkids school, people at your church, people in an organization that you're a part of. All of those folks are your networking. not your packet networking your people networking and people networking is very very very valuable People networking is probably one of the most valuable things you can apply towards any job that you would apply for at any age.
But when you are a little bit more older in this industry, you've got a little maturity behind you. You've been doing this for a while. You have a bigger Rolodex, if you will. A Rolodex. was these pieces of paper that you would collect with people's names, their contact information on it. Now we have a bigger contact app database.
We always talk about that Rolodex as being valuable because it is. I think of it as more of I have a bigger LinkedIn group. And I only add people to my LinkedIn connections that I have worked with directly. So everybody I'm talking to in that group are people that I know and people that know me. We've been at companies together. We've been at industry events together. We put together trade shows together. We have been in customer situations together. Those are very, very valuable.
Having that group of people that you can ping across, but perhaps more importantly, hey, everybody, I was laid off from this position. If you hear of anything out there regarding IT and this particular kind of job, let me know. And it is remarkable how useful that can be. We sometimes don't give it the credit it deserves. But knowing someone who works at a company, even if they are an acquaintance, is a very, very valuable thing. We want to work with people we know.
and people we trust. Not only people we know and trust to do the job, to show up on time, to be excited about the technology, to want to learn more about the technology, but we also want people that we know we can work with. This is not always a good combo. It's not always the combo we find. Sometimes we find good technical people that don't work well with others. Sometimes we find people that work really well with others that just can't apply the technology.
So being able to know someone, not just trust that they're going to be here on time and be able to support what we're doing as an organization, but find someone. that we like, that we can work with, that we can talk to. It's a very, very, very valuable thing. So I always tell people, if you're just starting in the industry, get a good LinkedIn together. And people sometimes will laugh at that and say,
Oh, another social media pusher. Are you an influencer? Are you trying to influence people on the LinkedIn? No, that's not the point at all. But you need some way to keep track of everybody. And that's what I use. I don't really post on LinkedIn. Not that much. We do have a LinkedIn Professor Messer page.
But I don't post as me. I post as the daily pop quiz or the weekly pop quiz that we're doing. I don't really put things about my career and what we are doing onto LinkedIn. But you probably want to consider doing that. If you put together a home lab. If you've downloaded Packet Tracer, if you've just run Wireshark, what better place to tell people what you just learned? In fact, very often, employers will go search through your social media to see what you are doing.
They might run across that article that you wrote about using Wireshark and what you found, about running uh pf sense for the first time and what attacks you saw and the reports that you created effectively take all of those stories i told you to create write an article instead of memorizing the story write the article on the story
post it on LinkedIn, and now anyone who wants to hire you can see that. And of course, it helps you remember the story when you're sitting in front of them so that in case they didn't see your article, let me tell you what I... You can find this on my LinkedIn, but let me tell you the story. And then you can tell the story about that.
So we do have some advantages at being working in this industry for a while that I think can skip over the concerns that we might have about age discrimination and instead can focus on who we know. the knowledge we've accumulated through the years in different organizations, the relationships that we have not only in our industry, but across our industry into different companies.
Knowing somebody at a company isn't necessarily knowing somebody in IT. You can know somebody in purchasing. You can know somebody in shipping and receiving. You can know somebody in accounting. But you know somebody. That is valuable. And the more you're out and doing this in the world, the more you have been working, the more people you will know. So there are some inherent advantages that you can always take and use.
Even if you do have a concern about age discrimination and how that might fit, there's always some type of discrimination. There's always some type of concern or even if it's something we don't.
immediately know about we don't know what conversations are going on behind the scenes so we always worry if we're older that it's age discrimination if you're a a particular gender you're worried about gender discrimination if you're a particular race you're worried about race discrimination there's always the worry but there are also ways that we can work to work around those problems and we need to use that knowledge we have
and every advantage that we have to get past any concerns people have because i think most people are pretty open-minded these days and we can work towards that bigger of how we can bring our well-honed knowledge to the table and be able to use that in wherever we happen to land. Well, I think that is probably...
a good place to finish up for today. I want to thank everyone for joining us. We always do have a good time on these live streams. Thank you for being here in the first hour and participating with our Q&A. Thanks for getting those questions right. And even the questions we had problems with, I think we all learned something from those. Thanks for joining us on our after show and getting those questions. Thank you for this. I know I said it before, but thank you for that 1 million subscribers.
really, really a lot of fun. We're having the best time talking about this and the stories of how we got here because that is not something that happened in a month. It's not something that happened in a year. This is something that's happened over a 15-year period. We're just sort of enjoying the ride at this point. And it's thanks to you. If you would like to help us and you enjoyed this video, we'd love it if you'd give a thumbs up. And since we just talked about YouTube.
go subscribe to our YouTube channel, something you can do for free that really, really, really does help us quite a bit. Thank you so much for joining us. Come back next week. Next Wednesday, we have our Security Plus study group. If this is way past next week, you can always check the calendar. professormesser.com slash calendar. Thank you, chat room. Good to see you. We'll see you next time on the Network Plus Study Group.