Tech Exam Prep

Tech Exam Prep

By Ran Chen, EA, CFP®EducationHow ToCourses
Download on the App Store

Tech Exam Prep episodes

  • CCNA Exam Prep 46, NAT — Static, Dynamic, PAT (Overload)
    This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams.
    In this episode you will learn:
    - Static NAT creates a permanent one-to-one mapping, ideal for hosting internal servers like web or email servers.
    - Dynamic NAT maps private IPs to a pool of public IPs, but connections fail if the public IP pool is exhausted.
    - PAT (Port Address Translation), or NAT Overload, allows many internal devices to share a single public IP address by using unique port numbers to track sessions.
    - Understand the four NAT address types: Inside Local (private source), Inside Global (public source), Outside Global (public destination), and Outside Local (destination as seen by the internal network).
    - Use the `show ip nat translations` command to view active NAT mappings and troubleshoot connectivity issues on the CCNA exam.
    For more free exam prep tools, practice questions, and AI-powered explanations, visit https://open-exam-prep.com/ or YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Open-exam-prep
    4 min
  • CCNA Exam Prep 45, DNS — Recursive vs Iterative, Records
    This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams.
    In this episode you will learn:
    - The critical difference between a recursive DNS query (client to resolver) and an iterative query (resolver to other DNS servers).
    - The primary functions of key DNS records for the CCNA exam: A (IPv4), AAAA (IPv6), CNAME (Alias), MX (Mail), and PTR (Reverse Lookup).
    - The step-by-step hierarchical DNS lookup process, from root servers to TLD servers to the final authoritative name server.
    - How DNS caching and Time-to-Live (TTL) values impact network performance and troubleshooting scenarios.
    - Common CCNA exam traps, such as confusing the roles of different record types or misunderstanding the query process.
    For more free exam prep tools, practice questions, and AI-powered explanations, visit https://open-exam-prep.com/ or YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Open-exam-prep
    4 min
  • CCNA Exam Prep 44, DHCP — Server, Client, Relay (IP Helper)
    This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams.
    In this episode you will learn:
    - The four steps of the DHCP DORA process: Discover, Offer, Request, and Acknowledge.
    - How clients receive essential network settings like the default gateway and DNS servers via DHCP options.
    - The role of a DHCP relay agent when clients and servers are on different subnets.
    - The specific Cisco IOS command, `ip helper-address`, used to configure a DHCP relay.
    - A common exam trap involving the correct placement of the `ip helper-address` command on a router interface.
    For more free exam prep tools, practice questions, and AI-powered explanations, visit https://open-exam-prep.com/ or YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Open-exam-prep
    3 min
  • CCNA Exam Prep 43, IPv6 Routing — Static and OSPFv3 Basics
    This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams.
    In this episode you will learn:
    - The `ipv6 unicast-routing` global command is mandatory for a router to forward IPv6 packets.
    - An IPv6 static route is configured using the `ipv6 route prefix next-hop` command structure.
    - OSPFv3 is enabled on a per-interface basis, which is a key difference from OSPFv2's network command.
    - OSPFv3 for IPv6 still requires a unique 32-bit router ID, typically configured manually.
    - Common CCNA exam traps involve forgetting to enable unicast routing or confusing OSPFv2 and OSPFv3 configuration commands.
    For more free exam prep tools, practice questions, and AI-powered explanations, visit https://open-exam-prep.com/ or YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Open-exam-prep
    3 min
  • CCNA Exam Prep 42, Default Gateway and Routing Loop Prevention
    This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams.
    In this episode you will learn:
    - A host uses its default gateway only when the destination IP address is on a different subnet.
    - The IP header's Time-to-Live (TTL) field is a last-resort mechanism that prevents packets from looping infinitely.
    - Split Horizon is a loop prevention rule where a router avoids advertising a route back to the neighbor from which it was learned.
    - Poison Reverse actively prevents loops by advertising a failed route with an infinite metric back to the source router.
    - An ICMP redirect message is sent by a router to inform a host on the same subnet of a more optimal first-hop router for a specific destination.
    For more free exam prep tools, practice questions, and AI-powered explanations, visit https://open-exam-prep.com/ or YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Open-exam-prep
    4 min
  • CCNA Exam Prep 41, VRRP and GLBP vs HSRP
    This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams.
    In this episode you will learn:
    - The core difference between redundancy (HSRP/VRRP) and true load balancing (GLBP).
    - How to identify the Cisco proprietary protocols (HSRP, GLBP) versus the open standard (VRRP).
    - The specific roles in each protocol: Active/Standby (HSRP), Master/Backup (VRRP), and AVG/AVF (GLBP).
    - Why GLBP's use of an Active Virtual Gateway to assign virtual MACs enables load sharing.
    - Common exam scenarios, such as choosing the right protocol for a multi-vendor network.
    For more free exam prep tools, practice questions, and AI-powered explanations, visit https://open-exam-prep.com/ or YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Open-exam-prep
    4 min
  • CCNA Exam Prep 40, HSRP Configuration and Verification
    This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams.
    In this episode you will learn:
    - How to configure essential HSRP commands like virtual IP, priority, and preemption.
    - The critical role of the `standby preempt` command in ensuring the highest priority router becomes active.
    - Using `standby track` to link HSRP failover to the status of an upstream interface, preventing traffic black holes.
    - How to interpret the output of `show standby brief` to quickly verify HSRP state and identify the active router.
    - Key exam facts like the default priority of 100 and the HSRPv1 multicast address of 224.0.0.2.
    For more free exam prep tools, practice questions, and AI-powered explanations, visit https://open-exam-prep.com/ or YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Open-exam-prep
    4 min
  • CCNA Exam Prep 39, First Hop Redundancy — HSRP States and Roles
    This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams.
    In this episode you will learn:
    - HSRP elects an Active router based on the highest priority value (0-255), with a default of 100.
    - Preemption is a critical feature that is disabled by default; without it, a higher-priority router will not reclaim the Active role upon recovery.
    - HSRP routers transition through states including Listen, Speak, Standby, and Active during the election process.
    - Interface tracking allows HSRP to decrease a router's priority if a non-HSRP interface fails, triggering a failover.
    - Default HSRP timers are 3 seconds for hello messages and 10 seconds for the hold-down timer.
    For more free exam prep tools, practice questions, and AI-powered explanations, visit https://open-exam-prep.com/ or YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Open-exam-prep
    4 min
  • CCNA Exam Prep 38, OSPF Cost Calculation and Path Selection
    This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams.
    In this episode you will learn:
    - The OSPF cost formula is Reference Bandwidth divided by Interface Bandwidth, with lower cumulative costs being preferred.
    - The default reference bandwidth of 100 Mbps creates a common exam trap, causing links faster than 100 Mbps to have an identical cost of 1.
    - How to fix the default cost issue network-wide using the `auto-cost reference-bandwidth` command in router configuration mode.
    - How to manually override the calculated cost for specific path engineering using the `ip ospf cost` command on an interface.
    - That the reference bandwidth must be set consistently across all routers in the OSPF domain to ensure accurate and predictable path selection.
    For more free exam prep tools, practice questions, and AI-powered explanations, visit https://open-exam-prep.com/ or YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Open-exam-prep
    3 min
  • CCNA Exam Prep 37, OSPF Single-Area Configuration
    This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams.
    In this episode you will learn:
    - How to enable the OSPF routing process using the `router ospf` command.
    - The correct structure of the `network` command, with a specific focus on calculating wildcard masks.
    - The difference between using the global `network` command and interface-specific OSPF configuration.
    - Key verification commands, such as `show ip ospf neighbor`, and how to interpret their output.
    - Common CCNA exam traps including mismatched area IDs, incorrect wildcard masks, and passive interfaces.
    For more free exam prep tools, practice questions, and AI-powered explanations, visit https://open-exam-prep.com/ or YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Open-exam-prep
    3 min

About Tech Exam Prep

From the publisher's feed

Tech Exam Prep is a free, daily podcast by OpenExamPrep covering the most in-demand IT and technology certification exams — including CompTIA Security+, AWS Cloud Practitioner, CompTIA Network+, CCNA,…