CCNA certification prep: IP Connectivity

Introduction: The CCNA exam

What percentage of the CCNA exam focuses on IP connectivity? The IP connectivity section of the CCNA exam is just one of the six exam topics. The exam blueprint shows that the IP connectivity section is the largest one, covering 25% of the exam. The section introduces some of the basic notions of routing, which require in-depth explanations.

What topics are covered in this section of the exam? At the very highest level, the topics covered in this section are related to explaining the concept of a route table and how to read its content, how a router makes forwarding decisions, the concept of static routes and how to configure them, the concept of Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) protocol and how to configure some of the basic features, and lastly, explaining the first hop redundancy protocols.

High-level overview of IP connectivity topics

The upcoming paragraphs of this guide will go a little deeper on what one is expected to know for the IP connectivity section.

Routing table components

Considering how the routing is performed by the routers, it’s critical to understand what a routing table is, what its components are and how to read a routing table. The below information will appear in a routing table output.

You will need to know what the following items are:

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• Routing protocol code: An identification of the source of information that installed that particular prefix in the routing table. At the CCNA level, you should be familiar with the codes for connected routes, static routes, local routes and OSPF routes. Each source of information has a default administrative distance value
• Prefix: Also called a subnet. An aggregation of IP addresses
• Network mask: Used to divide an IP address into a part that identifies the host and another part (Read more...)