Cisco Certified Network Associate (200-301 CCNA) Flashcards

Six domains: Network Fundamentals, Network Access, IP Connectivity, IP Services, Security Fundamentals, and Automation and Programmability.

IP Connectivity, weighted at 25%, making it the single most heavily tested domain on the exam.

A switch forwards frames between devices on the same Layer 2 broadcast domain using MAC addresses; a router forwards packets between different Layer 3 networks using IP addresses.

Physical, Data Link, Network, Transport, Session, Presentation, Application.

VLANs logically segment a single physical switched network into multiple separate broadcast domains, improving security and reducing unnecessary broadcast traffic without requiring separate physical switches.

A trunk port carries traffic for multiple VLANs between switches (or a switch and router), tagging frames with 802.1Q VLAN IDs so the receiving device can identify which VLAN each frame belongs to.

STP prevents Layer 2 loops in redundant switched topologies by blocking redundant paths while keeping one loop-free active path, then re-enabling blocked ports if the active path fails.

OSPF has a default administrative distance of 110, while EIGRP's internal routes default to 90 — a router prefers the route from the source with the lower administrative distance.

A default gateway is the router interface a host sends traffic to when the destination IP address is on a different network than the host's own subnet.

/24 means the first 24 bits of the 32-bit IP address are the network portion, equivalent to a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0.

A broadcast domain is the set of devices that receive each other's broadcast frames (bounded by routers); a collision domain is a set of devices that could cause a frame collision on a shared segment (bounded by switch ports or routers).

DHCP automatically assigns IP addressing information to hosts. Its core process uses four messages: Discover, Offer, Request, and Acknowledge (DORA).

DNS translates human-readable domain names into IP addresses so hosts can locate and communicate with each other without users needing to memorize numeric addresses.

Network Address Translation maps private internal IP addresses to public IP addresses, conserving public IPv4 address space and hiding internal addressing from external networks.

Static routes are manually configured by an administrator and do not adapt to topology changes; dynamic routing protocols like OSPF or EIGRP automatically learn and adjust routes as the network changes.

EtherChannel bundles multiple physical switch links into one logical link, increasing available bandwidth and providing redundancy while appearing as a single link to Spanning Tree Protocol.

An ACL is an ordered set of permit/deny rules applied to router or switch interfaces that filters traffic based on criteria such as source/destination IP address, protocol, and port number.

TCP is connection-oriented, providing reliable, ordered delivery with acknowledgments and flow control; UDP is connectionless and offers faster, lower-overhead delivery without reliability guarantees.

ARP resolves a known IPv4 address to its corresponding MAC address on a local network segment so a device can properly frame and deliver traffic at Layer 2.

An FHRP allows multiple routers to share a virtual IP address so hosts have a resilient default gateway if one router fails; examples include HSRP, VRRP, and GLBP.

IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses typically written in dotted decimal, offering a limited address space; IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses written in hexadecimal, vastly expanding available addresses and eliminating the practical need for NAT.

PoE delivers electrical power to devices like IP phones, wireless access points, and cameras over the same Ethernet cable used for data, eliminating the need for a separate power source.

QoS classifies, marks, and prioritizes network traffic so that latency-sensitive or business-critical traffic (like voice or video) receives preferential treatment over less time-sensitive traffic during congestion.

802.1X provides port-based network access control, requiring a device to authenticate (often via a RADIUS server) before it is granted access to the network through a switch port.

A stateful firewall tracks the state of active connections and permits return traffic automatically based on that state; a stateless firewall evaluates each packet independently against static rules with no awareness of connection context.

Network automation uses APIs and tools (such as RESTCONF/NETCONF and controller-based platforms) to programmatically configure and manage network devices, replacing manual box-by-box CLI configuration.

A traditional architecture manages each device individually via its own control plane and CLI; a controller-based (SDN) architecture centralizes the control plane in a controller that programmatically manages many devices.

Cisco Discovery Protocol is a Cisco-proprietary Layer 2 protocol that lets directly connected Cisco devices discover information about each other, such as device type, platform, and port ID.

The CCNA 200-301 exam is delivered through Pearson VUE, either at an Authorized Test Center in a proctored environment or online via the OnVUE remote-proctoring service.