The 5 NETWORK+ Exam Topics

The five topics to the network plus exam as you may already know Network Educative about helping you pass the network plus exam and get your own career or even business started in the computer networking field contrary to what some are saying computer networking and those with expertise in it is growing phenomenally fast and if it's a field or a topic you're personally interested in Network Educative want to help you learn all about it and simplify it and make it as easy for you to understand as possible.  what topics and areas you'll need to know and the basic percentages on any given network plus exam test that each of those topics makes up on the test this is kind of your biggest heads up this is to allow you to more easily pass the exam to know what to study to get your certification and to be well on your way with your own career or business shortly.

Fig 1: The 5 NETWORK+ Exam Topics

The network plus exam is 90 minutes long have a maximum of 90 questions on the exam to pass the network plus exam you will need a passing score of 720 or higher now this is on a scale of 100 to 900 so you can score anywhere from the lowest of 100 to highest of 900. you need to make at least a 720 or higher to pass the network plus and get your certification it's somewhat well known that every question is worth a different number of points you'll have multiple choice questions and performance based questions so it's hard to determine exactly how many questions you'll need to get right to get a passing score but suffice it to say you want to get as many correct as possible just like any other test or exam now multiple choice will be like a b c or d type questions and when performance based you may have to place things into a particular order or fill in the blanks or in some cases you may be presented with a scenario and have to complete that scenario online you also may be presented with a command prompt and you'll be asked to perform a specific function which is why it's good to know the cisco ios and the commands and functions and uses of each of those commands.

We'll get to that in other materials essentially there are five categories you'll encounter on the network plus exam the first of which is what we're going to call networking concepts.

The Networking Concepts 

One of the five sections on this on the networkplace exam is an average of about 23 percent of the topics or the questions that you're going to get on any test now networking concepts covers things like ports and protocols their purposes and their uses it covers things like devices applications services and protocols at appropriate osi layers so you want to know the osi model concepts and characteristics of switching and routing scenario specific configuration of appropriate ip addressing components you'll need to know comparing and contrasting characteristics of network topologies technologies and types you'll need to know scenario-specific implementation and configuration of appropriate wireless technologies you'll need to understand some cloud concepts and you'll need to know the functions of network services so that's one of the five areas you're going to see on the questions on the network plus exam again those are all under networking concepts.

The other topic area out of the five that you're going to encounter is what we're going to call infrastructure.

Infrastructure

This average is about 18 of any network plus exam this is things like deploying the appropriate cabling solution what type cables are used when they might be needed how long those cables can go before you experience things like attenuation and loss of signal and what types of cables you need is it twisted pair is it fiber optic that type of thing you'll also need to know how to determine networking device placement and how to install those or configure them basics of those you'll need to know advanced networking device purposes and use cases in other words you'll need to know more advanced things like when would you use a switch when would you use a layer 3 device or a router which is a layer 3 device would you use a firewall if you are still using hubs which we don't when would you use those that type of thing you'll also need to know the purposes of network storage technologies and virtualization now this is getting into like things like data center and things like that but you're going to need to understand some of the basics of those the purposes of those storage technologies like what is a storage array used for what is a storage server or a normal server used for why do we have virtualization of server components that type of thing you'll also then need to know how to compare and contrast different when or wide area network technologies but those are the kind of different areas of infrastructure that you'll need to understand again that's 18 estimated of the network plus exam.

The third topical area that you'll need to know and study for the networkless exam is network operations.

Network Operations

This on average makes up about 17 percent of the network plus exam network operations is things like use of appropriate diagrams and documentation to manage your network how to compare and contrast disaster recovery and business continuity concepts what do you do if your network goes down what do you do if you lose power if you have a tropical storm or hurricane things like that earthquake common scanning patching and monitoring processes and expected outputs things like packet captures things like that use of scenario-specific remote access methods in other words how how what methods can you use to remotely access different devices or management of a network or devices on the network and then the last of that is kind of the policies and best practices that are used in network operations.

The fourth topic or area is network security.

Network Security

And again network security is a big growing portion of it overall it's also a big the biggest growing portion of networking in general network security is going to cover about of any average network plus exam that you take this is things like physical security of devices and their purposes how do you physically secure those to keep people from accessing those devices or areas of your network that aren't allowed to things like authentication and access controls securing basic wireless networks scenario-based type things like that common networking attacks implementing network device hardening and that's also scenario based as well as common mitigation techniques if somebody has hacked your network if somebody has to network resources things like that what are the mitigation techniques that are used and again these don't go into extreme detail on the network plus exam but you're going to need to know some of the basic premises behind all of these and the tools and the protocols.

Things that are used the fifth topic on the network plus exam is network troubleshooting and tools. 

Network Troubleshooting and Tools

And this will account for about 22 percent of any exam that you might take for network plus this is things like network troubleshooting methodologies appropriate tools for different scenarios troubleshooting common wired connectivity or performance issues troubleshooting common wireless connectivity or performance issues and troubleshooting common network service issues so that's the basic rundown of what you'll encounter on the network plus exam if you enroll in the more detailed courses we offer on each one of these categories we get more in-depth and detailed with everything in each of those categories.