Study notes for the CompTIA Network+ exam.
- Networking Concepts
- OSI Model
- Physical
- Data Link
- Network
- Transport
- Sessions
- Presentation
- Application
- Appliances
- Physical & Virtual
- Router
- Switch
- Firewall
- Intrusion Detection System (IDS)
- Load Balancer
- Proxy
- Network-Attached Storage (NAS)
- Storage Area Network (SAN)
- Wireless Access Point (WAP)
- Wireless Controller
- Applications
- Content Delivery Network (CDN)
- Functions 2. Virtual Private Network (VPN) 3. Quality of Service (QoS) 4. Time-to-Live (TTL)
- Physical & Virtual
- Cloud Concepts
- Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV)
- Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
- Network Security Groups
- Network Security Lists
- Cloud Gateways
- Internet Gateway
- Network Address Translation (NAT) Gateway
- Cloud Connectivity Options
- VPN
- Direct Connect
- Deployment Models
- Public
- Private
- Hybrid
- Service Models 4. Software as a Service (SaaS) 5. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) 6. Platform as a Service (PaaS)
- Scalability
- Elasticity
- Multi-tenancy
- Common Ports, Protocols, Services and Traffic
- Protocols
- File Transfer Protocl (FTP)
- Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)
- Secure Shell (SSH)
- Telnet
- Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)
- Domain Name System (DNS)
- Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)
- Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP)
- Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
- Network Time Protocol (NTP)
- Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)
- Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)
- Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS)
- Server Message Block (SMB)
- Syslog
- Simple Mail Transfer Protocol Secure (SMTPS)
- Lightweight Directory Access Protocol Secure (LDAPS)
- Structure Query Language (SQL) Server
- Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP)
- Sessions Initiation Protocol (SIP)
- Internet Protocol (IP) Type
- Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP)
- Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)
- User Datagram Protocol (UDP)
- Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE)
- Internet Protocol Security (IPSec)
- Authentication Header (AH)
- Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP)
- Internet Key Exchange (IKE)
- Traffic Types 6. Unicast 7. Multicast 8. Anycast 9. Broadcast
- Protocols
- Transmission Media and Transceivers
- Wireless
- 802.11
- Cellular
- Satellite
- Wired 4. 802.3 5. Single-mode vs Multi-mode fibre 6. Direct Attach copper (DAC) 7. Twinaxial cable 8. Coaxial cable 9. Cable speeds 10. Plenum vs non-plenum cable
- Transceivers
- Ethernet
- Fibre Channel (FC)
- Form Factors
- Small form-factor pluggable (SFP)
- Quad small form-factor pluggable (QSFP)
- Connector types
- Subscriber connector (SC)
- Local connector (LC)
- Straight tip (ST)
- Multi-fibre push on (MPO)
- Registered jack (RJ)11
- RJ45
- F-type
- Wireless
- Network Topologies, Architectures and Types
- Mesh
- Hybrid
- Star/hub and spoke
- Spine and leaf
- Point to point
- Three-tier hierarchical model
- Core
- Distribution
- Access
- Collapsed Core
- Traffic Flows 4. North-south 5. East-west
- IPv4 Network Addresses
- Public vs Private
- Automatic Private IP Addressing (APIPA)
- RFC1918
- Loopback/localhost
- Subnetting 4. Variable Length Subnet Mask (VLSM) 5. Classless Inter-domain Routing (CIDR)
- IPv4 Address Classes 6. Class A 7. Class B 8. Class C 9. Class D 10. Class E
- Public vs Private
- Modern Network Environments
- Software-defined network (SND) and Software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN)
- Application aware
- Zero-touch provisioning
- Transport agnostic
- Central policy management
- Virtual Extensible Local Area Network (VXLAN) 5. Data centre interconnect (DCI) 6. Layer 2 encapsulation
- Zero trust architecture (ZTA) 7. Policy-based authentication 8. Authorisation 9. Least Privilege Access
- Secure Access Secure Edge (SASE) / Security Service Edge (SSE)
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC) 10. Automation 1. Playbooks/templates/reusable tasks 2. Configuration drift/compliance 3. Upgrades 4. Dynamic Inventories 11. Source Control 1. Version Control 2. Central Repository 3. Conflict Identification 4. Branching
- IPv6 Addressing 12. Mitigating address exhaustion 13. Compatibility requirements 1. Tunnelling 2. Dual stack 3. NAT64
- Software-defined network (SND) and Software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN)
- OSI Model
- Network Implementation 6. Routing Technologies 1. Static routing 2. Dynamic Routing 1. Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) 2. Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP) 3. Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) 3. Route Selection 1. Administrative distance 2. Prefix length 3. Metric 4. Address translation 4. NAT 5. Port address translation (PAT) 5. First Hop Redundancy Protocol (FHRP) 1. Virtual IP (VIP) 2. Subinterfaces 7. Switching Technologies 6. Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) 1. VLAN database 2. Switch Virtual Interface (SVI) 7. Interface configuration 1. Native VLAN 2. Voice VLAN 3. 802.1Q tagging 4. Link aggregation 5. Speed 6. Duplex 8. Spanning Tree 9. Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) 1. Jumbo frames 8. Wireless Technologies 10. Channels 2. Channel width 3. Non-overlapping channels 4. Regulatory impacts 1. 802.11h 11. Frequency options 5. 2.4GHz 6. 5Ghz 7. 6Ghz 8. Band steering 12. Service set identifier (SSID) 9. Basic service set identifier (BSSID) 10. Extended service set identifier (ESSID) 13. Network Types 11. Mesh networks 12. Ad hoc 13. Point to point 14. Infrastructure 14. Encryption 15. Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 (WPA2) 16. WPA3 15. Guest Networks 17. Captive portals 16. Authentication 18. Pre-shared Key (PSK) vs Enterprise 17. Antennas 19. Omnidirectional vs Directional 18. Autonomous vs Lightweight access point 9. Physical Installations 19. Important implications 20. Locations 2. Intermediate distribution frame (IDF) 3. Main distribution frame (MDF) 21. Rack size 22. Port-side exhaust intake 23. Cabling 4. Patch panel 5. Fibre distribution panel 24. Lockable 20. Power 25. Uninterrupted power supply (UPS) 26. Power distribution unit (PDU) 27. Power load 28. Voltage 21. Environmental factors 29. Humidity 30. Fire suppression 31. Temperature
- Network Operations
- Organisational Processes
- Documentation
- Physical vs logical diagrams
- Rack diagrams
- Cable maps and diagrams
- Network diagrams
- Layer 1
- Layer 2
- Layer 3
- Asset inventory
- Hardware
- Software
- Licensing
- Warranty support
- IP address management (IPAM)
- Service-level agreement (SLA)
- Wireless survey/heat map
- Life-cycle management
- End-of-life (EOL)
- End-of-support (EOS)
- Software management
- Patches and bug fixes
- Operating system (OS)
- Firmware
- Decommissioning
- Change management
- Request process tracking/service request
- Configuration management 2. Production configuration 3. Backup configuration 4. Baseline/golden configuration
- Documentation
- Network Monitoring Technologies
- Methods
- SNMP
- Traps
- Management information base (MIB)
- Versions
- v2c
- v3
- Community strings
- Authentication
- Flow data
- Packet capture
- Baseline metrics
- Anomaly alerting notifications
- Log aggregation
- Syslog collector
- Security information and event management (SIEM)
- Application programming interface (API) integration
- Port mirroring
- SNMP
- Solutions 8. Network discovery 1. Ad-hoc 2. Scheduled 9. Traffic analysis 10. Performance monitoring 11. Availability monitoring 12. Configuration monitoring
- Methods
- Disaster Recovery
- DR metrics
- Recovery point objective (RPO)
- Recovery time obejctive (RTO)
- Mean time to repair (MTTR)
- Mean time between failures (MTBF)
- DR sites
- Cold site
- Warm site
- Hot site
- High-availability Approaches
- Active-active
- Active-passive
- Testing
- Tabletop exercises
- Validation tests
- DR metrics
- IPv4 and IPv6 Network Services
- Dynamic Addressing
- DHCP
- Reservations
- Scope
- Lease time
- Options
- Relay/IP helper
- Exclusions
- Stateless Address Autoconfiguration (SLAAC)
- DHCP
- Name Resolution
- DNS
- Domain Name Security Extensions (DNSSEC)
- DNS over HTTPS (DoH) and DNS over TLS (DoT)
- Record types
- Address (A)
- AAAA
- Canonical (CNAME)
- Mail exchange (MX)
- Text (TXT)
- Nameserver (NS)
- Pointer (PTR)
- Zone types 8. Forward 9. Reverse
- Authoritative vs non-Authoritative
- Primary vs Secondary
- Recursive
- Hosts file
- DNS
- Time protocols
- NTP
- Precision time protocol (PTP)
- Network time security (NTS)
- Dynamic Addressing
- Network Access and Management Methods
- Site-to-site VPN
- Client-to-site VPN
- Clientless
- Split tunnel vs full tunnel
- Connection methods
- SSH
- Graphical User Interface (GUI)
- API
- Console
- Jump box/host
- In-band vs out-of-band management
- Organisational Processes
- Network Security 6. Basic Network Security 6. Logical Security 1. Encryption 1. Data in transit 2. Data at rest 2. Certificates 1. Public key infrastructure (PKI) 2. Self-signed 3. Identity and access management (IAM) 1. Authentication 1. Multifactor authentication (MFA) 2. Single sign-on (SSO) 3. Remote Authentication Dial-in User Service (RADIUS) 4. LDAP 5. Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) 6. Terminal Access Controller Access Control System Plus (TACACS+) 7. Time-based authentication 2. Authorisation 8. Least privilege 9. Role-based access control 4. Geofencing 7. Physical Security 1. Camera 2. Locks 8. Deception technologies 1. Honeypot 2. Honeynet 9. Common Security Terminology 1. Risk 2. Vulnerability 3. Exploit 4. Threat 5. Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability (CIA) triad 10. Audits and Regulatory Compliance 6. Data locality 7. Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) 8. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 11. Network Segmentation enforcement 9. Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) 10. Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), 11. Industrial Control System (ICS) 12. Operational Technology (OT) 13. Guest 14. Bring your own device (BYOD) 7. Types of Network Attacks and Impact 12. (Distributed) Denial of Service ((D)DoS) 13. VLAN hopping 14. MAC flooding 15. ARP poisoning + spoofing 16. DNS poisoning + poisoning 17. Rogue devices and services 15. DHCP 16. AP 18. Evil twin 19. On-path attack 20. Social Engineering 17. Phishing 18. Dumpster-diving 19. Shoulder-surfing 20. Tailgating 21. Malware 8. Network Security and Defense Techniques 22. Device hardening 21. Disable unused ports and services 22. Change default passwords 23. Network Access Control (NAC) 23. Port security 24. 802.1X 25. MAC filtering 24. Key management 25. Security rules 26. Access control list (ACL) 27. Uniform Resource Locator (URL) filtering 28. Content filtering 26. Zones 29. Trusted vs untrusted 30. Screened subnet
- Network Troubleshooting
- Troubleshooting Methodology
- Identify the problem
- Gather information
- Question users
- Identify symptoms
- Determine is anything has changed
- Duplicate the problem, if possible
- Approach multiple problems individually
- Establish a theory of probable cause
- Question the obvious
- Consider multiple approaches
- Top-to-bottom/bottom-to-top OSI model
- Divide and conquer
- Test the theory to determine the cause
- If confirmed, determine next steps
- If not confirmed, establish new theory or escalate
- Establish a plan of action to resolve problem and identify potential effects
- Implement the solution or escalate as necessary
- Verify full system functionality and implement preventative measures if applicable
- Document findings, actions, outcomes and lessons learned throughout the process
- Identify the problem
- Troubleshooting Common Cabling and Physical Interface Issues 8. Cable issues 1. Incorrect cable 1. Single mode vs multimode 2. Category 5/6/7/8 3. Shielded twisted pair (STP) vs unshielded twisted pair (UTP) 2. Signal degradation 4. Crosstalk 5. Interference 6. Attenuation 3. Improper termination 4. Transmitter (TX) / Receiver (RX) transposed 9. Interface issues 1. Increasing interface counters 1. Cyclic redundancy check (CRC) 2. Runts 3. Giants 4. Drops 2. Port status 1. Error disabled 2. Administratively down 3. Suspended 10. Hardware issues 1. Power over Ethernet (PoE) 1. Power budget exceeded 2. Incorrect standard 2. Transceivers 1. Mismatch 2. Signal strength
- Common issues with network services
- Switching issues
- STP
- Network loops
- Root bridge selection
- Port roles
- Port states
- Incorrect VLAN assignment
- ACLS
- STP
- Route selection 4. Routing table 5. Default routes
- Address pool exhaustion
- Incorrect default gateway
- Incorrect IP address
- Duplicate IP address
- Incorrect subnet mask
- Switching issues
- Common performance issues
- Congestion/contention
- Bottlenecking
- Bandwidth
- Throughput capacity
- Latency
- Packet loss
- Jitter
- Wireless
- Interference
- Channel overlap
- Signal degradation or loss
- Insufficient wireless coverage
- Client disassociation issues
- Roaming misconfiguration
- Interference
- Tools & Protocols
- Software Tools
- Protocol Analyzer
- Command Line
- ping
- traceroute/tracert
- nslookup
- tcpdump
- dig
- netstat
- ip/ifconfig/ipconfig
- arp
- nmap
- Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP)
- Speed tester
- Hardware tools
- Toner
- Cable tester
- Taps
- Wi-Fi analyzer
- Visual fault locator
- Basic networking device commands 6. show mac-address-table 7. show route 8. show interface 9. show config 10. show arp 11. show vlan 12. show power
- Software Tools
- Troubleshooting Methodology