CompTIA Network+ Flashcards

It divides an IP address into network and host portions, determining which addresses belong to the same local network.

The current version is N10-009, which launched on June 20, 2024.

Five domains: Networking Concepts, Network Implementation, Network Operations, Network Security, and Network Troubleshooting.

Domain 5, Network Troubleshooting, is the largest at 24% of the exam.

Up to 90 questions in a 90-minute window, mixing multiple-choice and performance-based questions.

CompTIA A+ certification plus roughly 9 to 12 months of hands-on experience in a junior network administrator or network support technician role.

Through CompTIA's Continuing Education (CE) program, by submitting CEUs from approved activities and paying the renewal fee with a CE token.

A seven-layer conceptual framework (Physical, Data Link, Network, Transport, Session, Presentation, Application) describing how network communication functions; Network+ uses it to categorize protocols, devices, and troubleshooting steps by layer.

Layer 2 (Data Link), because it forwards frames based on MAC addresses within a broadcast domain.

Layer 3 (Network), because it forwards packets between different networks based on IP addresses.

TCP is connection-oriented, using handshakes and acknowledgments to guarantee ordered, reliable delivery, while UDP is connectionless and faster but offers no delivery guarantee.

HTTP uses TCP port 80; HTTPS uses TCP port 443 for encrypted web traffic.

DNS primarily uses UDP port 53 for lookups, and TCP port 53 for zone transfers and larger responses.

DHCP automatically assigns IP addressing information to clients using the DORA process: Discover, Offer, Request, Acknowledge.

Classless Inter-Domain Routing notation expresses a subnet mask as a slash followed by the number of network bits, such as /24, replacing rigid class-based addressing.

Public IP addresses are globally routable on the internet, while private IP addresses (like the 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, and 192.168.0.0/16 ranges) are reserved for internal networks and require NAT to reach the internet.

Network Address Translation maps private internal IP addresses to a public IP address, allowing multiple internal devices to share one external address for internet access.

A Virtual LAN logically segments a single physical switch infrastructure into multiple broadcast domains, improving security and traffic management without additional physical hardware.

It is the router address a device uses to forward traffic destined for networks outside its own local subnet.

It prevents Layer 2 switching loops in redundant network topologies by logically blocking selected links while keeping them available as backups.

Stateful inspection tracks the context of active connections and allows return traffic automatically, while stateless inspection evaluates each packet independently against static rules.

A Virtual Private Network creates an encrypted tunnel across an untrusted network, allowing remote users or sites to securely access private network resources as if directly connected.

QoS prioritizes certain types of network traffic, such as voice or video, to reduce latency and jitter and ensure performance for time-sensitive applications.

The ping command, which uses ICMP echo requests and replies.

It reveals the hop-by-hop path packets take to a destination, along with latency at each hop, helping isolate where along a route delay or failure occurs.

MTTR (Mean Time to Repair) measures average time to restore a failed system, while MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) measures average operating time between failures; lower MTTR and higher MTBF both indicate better reliability.

The physical point where a telecommunications provider's network ends and the customer's internal wiring and responsibility begins.

Multimode fiber has a larger core and is used for shorter distances with LED light sources, while single-mode fiber has a smaller core, uses laser light, and supports much longer transmission distances.

A DHCP relay forwards DHCP requests across subnet boundaries to a remote DHCP server, while DHCP snooping is a switch security feature that filters untrusted DHCP messages to prevent rogue DHCP servers.