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N T R O D U C T I O N
Professional certifications have been an important part of the computing industry for many years and will continue
to become more important. Many reasons exist for these certifications, but the most popularly cited reason is that of
credibility. All other considerations held equal, the certified employee/consultant/job candidate is considered more
valuable than one who is not.
Goals and Methods
The most important and somewhat obvious goal of this book is to help you pass the Remote Access exam (#640-
505). In fact, if the primary objective of this book was different, then the book's title would be misleading; however,
the methods used in this book to help you pass the CCNP Remote Access exam are designed to also make you much
more knowledgeable about how to do your job. While this book and the accompanying CD together have more than
enough questions to help you prepare for the actual exam, 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 is to help you discover the exam topics that you need to review in more
depth, 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 does not try to help you pass by memorization but helps you
truly learn and understand the topics. The Remote Access exam is just one of the foundation topics in the CCNP
certification and the knowledge contained within is vitally important to consider yourself a truly skilled routing/
switching engineer or specialist. This book would do you a disservice if it didn't attempt to help you learn the
material. To that end, the book will help you pass the Remote Access exam by using the following methods:
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Helping you discover which test topics you have not mastered
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Providing explanations and information to fill in your knowledge gaps
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Supplying exercises and scenarios that enhance your ability to recall and deduce the answers to test questions
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Providing practice exercises on the topics and the testing process via test questions on the CD
Who Should Read This Book?
This book is not designed to be a general networking topics book, although it can be used for that purpose. This
book is intended to tremendously increase your chances of passing the CCNP Remote Access exam. Although other
objectives can be achieved from using this book, the book is written with one goal in mind: to help you pass the
exam.
So why should you want to pass the CCNP Remote Access exam? Because it's one of the milestones towards
getting the CCNP certification; no small feat in itself. What would getting the CCNP mean to you? A raise, a
promotion, recognition? How about to enhance your resume? To demonstrate that you are serious about continuing
the learning process and that you're not content to rest on your laurels. To please your reseller-employer, who needs
more certified employees for a higher discount from Cisco. Or one of many other reasons.