Objectives and Methods

The most important and somewhat obvious objective of this book is to help you pass the Cisco BCMSN exam (642-811). In fact, if the primary objective of this book were different, the book's title would be misleading; however, the methods used in this book to help you pass the BCMSN exam are designed to also make you much more knowledgeable about how to do your job. Although this book and the accompanying CD-ROM have many example test questions, the method in which they are used is not to simply make you memorize as many questions and answers as you possibly can.

One key methodology used in this book helps you discover the exam topics about which you need more review, to help you fully understand and remember those details, and to help you prove to yourself that you have retained your knowledge of those topics. So this book helps you pass not by memorization, but by helping you truly learn and understand the topics. The BCMSN exam is just one of the foundation topics in the CCNP and CCDP certifications, and the knowledge contained within is vitally important to consider yourself a truly skilled routing and switching engineer or specialist. This book would do you a disservice if it did not attempt to help you learn the material. To that end, the book can help you pass the BCMSN exam by using the following methods:

• Helping you discover which test topics you have not mastered

• Providing explanations and information to fill in your knowledge gaps

• Supplying exercises and scenarios that enhance your ability to recall and deduce the answers to test questions

• Providing practice exercises on the topics and the testing process through test questions on the CD-ROM