Ran Chen, EA, CFP®

Tech Exam Prep

Education EN ↓ 110 episodes

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, CompTIA A+, and more. Each 5-minute episode breaks down one exam topic with concrete examples, common exam traps, and memory tricks to help you pass on your first attempt. No fluff, no filler — just the concepts you need to know, explained the way the exam tests them. This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP desig...

Author

Ran Chen, EA, CFP®

Episodes

CCNA Exam Prep 10, Verification Tools — ping, traceroute, ARP 22.05.2026 4:07

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: - `ping` uses ICMP echo requests/replies to test reachability, w...

CCNA Exam Prep 9, IPv6 Configuration — SLAAC, DHCPv6, EUI-64 21.05.2026 4:16

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 SLAAC uses Router Advertisements (RAs) to allow a host to...

CCNA Exam Prep 8, IPv6 Addressing Format and Types 20.05.2026 3:37

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: - IPv6 addresses are 128 bits, written as eight, 16-bit hexadeci...

CCNA Exam Prep 7, VLSM and Subnet Planning 19.05.2026 3:32

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: - VLSM (Variable-Length Subnet Masking) allows using different s...

CCNA Exam Prep 6, IPv4 Subnetting Without a Calculator 18.05.2026 3:53

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: - To calculate a subnet's block size instantly using the '256 mi...

CCNA Exam Prep 5, IPv4 Addressing Basics and Private Ranges 17.05.2026 3:49

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 three RFC 1918 private IPv4 address ranges you must memori...

CCNA Exam Prep 4, Cabling Types — Fiber and Copper 16.05.2026 3:48

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 differentiate Single-Mode Fiber for long-distance links...

CCNA Exam Prep 3, Network Topology Architectures 15.05.2026 3:17

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: - To differentiate 3-tier (Access, Distribution, Core) for large...

CCNA Exam Prep 2, Network Components — Routers, Switches, Firewalls, APs 14.05.2026 3:41

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: - Routers operate at Layer 3 to forward packets between differen...

CCNA Exam Prep 1, OSI and TCP/IP Layered Models 13.05.2026 3:47

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 names and functions of the 7 layers of the OSI model. - Ho...

[AWS CCP] 50, AWS Trusted Advisor and Health Dashboard 12.05.2026 3:19

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 five categories of AWS Trusted Advisor: Cost Optimization,...

[AWS CCP] 49, AWS Marketplace and Partner Network 11.05.2026 3:05

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 function of AWS Marketplace as a digital catalog for...

[AWS CCP] 48, AWS Free Tier Details 10.05.2026 3:17

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: - To distinguish between the three AWS Free Tier types: 12-Month...

[AWS CCP] 47, AWS Cost Optimization Tools 09.05.2026 2:14

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 AWS Trusted Advisor provides high-level checks to identify...

[AWS CCP] 46, AWS Billing and Cost Management 08.05.2026 3:22

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: - To differentiate between the Billing Dashboard (high-level sum...

[AWS CCP] 45, AWS Pricing Models 07.05.2026 4:18

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: - On-Demand pricing is the most flexible and expensive option, i...

[AWS CCP] 44, AWS Analytics Services 06.05.2026 3:09

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: - Use Amazon Athena for serverless SQL queries directly on data...

[AWS CCP] 43, Machine Learning Services on AWS 05.05.2026 3:09

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: - Amazon SageMaker is the platform for data scientists to build,...

[AWS CCP] 42, Amazon CloudWatch Monitoring 04.05.2026 3:01

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 core functions of CloudWatch: Metrics, Alarms, Logs,...

[AWS CCP] 41, AWS Developer and Deployment Tools 03.05.2026 3:30

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: - CodeCommit is AWS's managed source control service for private...

[AWS CCP] 40, Amazon Aurora and Redshift 02.05.2026 3:32

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: - Amazon Aurora is a high-performance relational database (OLTP)...

[AWS CCP] 39, AWS Compute Services Comparison 01.05.2026 3:39

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: - To choose EC2 when an exam question emphasizes needing full co...

[AWS CCP] 38, Amazon SQS and SNS Messaging 30.04.2026 3:21

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: - SQS Standard queues offer high throughput with at-least-once d...

[AWS CCP] 37, AWS Storage Services Comparison 29.04.2026 3:21

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 fundamental difference between object (S3), block (EBS), a...

[AWS CCP] 36, Amazon Route 53 DNS 28.04.2026 3:24

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 Route 53 serves as both a domain registrar and a highly av...