Welcome to this course
on the CompTIA Network+ certification exam.
This course is considered the first networking certification
that anyone who wants to enter the IT
or cybersecurity industry should study for and earn.
It's going to provide you with a great foundation
and baseline knowledge of networking.
And throughout this course and our time together,
we're going to cover how to configure, manage, and troubleshoot
the network infrastructure
within your company or organization.
Now, this certification was designed for beginners
who have less than one year of IT operations
and administration experience,
or for those students
who have already completed their CompTIA A+ certifications.
Now, on the Network+ exam,
knowledge from the CompTIA A+ exams
is considered to be assumed knowledge.
So I'm not going to go back and reteach
all of that content again here
from the Core 1 and Core 2 exams.
Instead, we're going to be building
upon that foundational knowledge of hardware, software,
and computer networks
throughout our time together in this course.
Now, if you haven't done your A+ exams yet, that's okay.
We're still going to get you through preparing
for the entire Network+ exam without any issues
if you pay attention to what we teach.
Now, as we go through this course,
I have designed it to be easy to follow along with
and for you to learn in order for you to be able to pass
your Network+ certification exam.
But we simply don't have the time to reteach everything
from the CompTIA A+ Core 1 and Core 2 certifications
in this course.
Otherwise, you'll be spending a hundred hours or more
just watching those videos.
But don't worry if there's any specific topics
from the CompTIA A+ exams that are essential
for your understanding of the materials in this course,
I will stop and take the time to review
those areas again briefly with you in our videos
because they are important for you to know
as we move into the Network+ exam.
But remember, our real focus here
is on building upon your previous knowledge
about hardware, software, and networks
as you start learning
how to configure, manage, and troubleshoot
enterprise networks and systems in this course.
Now, you'll probably find it a little bit easier
to complete this course and the exam
if you already have a background in technology,
but that is not a fixed requirement.
I've had lots and lots of students who are brand new
to networking and cybersecurity,
and they've taken this course
and passed the exam on their first try,
but they had to put in a little extra effort
and fill in their own knowledge gaps
through additional self-study
because they didn't already have previous experience
or those A+ certifications.
Now, this course is designed
to be a full textbook replacement.
But I know some people like using a textbook.
If you'd like to get a textbook to study from,
the one I recommend is
The Official CompTIA Network+ Student Guide
that's available directly from the CompTIA website.
For those people taking the course at our website,
diontraining.com, you do get a fully licensed copy
of that textbook included in that version of the course.
All right, let's take a quick detour right now
so I can introduce myself.
My name is Jason Dion,
and I'm the lead instructor here at Dion Training Solutions.
I've been working in the IT and cybersecurity field
for over two decades for organizations both large and small.
When I talk about small organizations,
I'm talking about organizations
with less than about 50 people,
like my own company, Dion Training.
Now, when I talk about large organizations,
one of my last positions was for an organization
that spanned six continents, dozens of countries,
and millions of end users.
And guess what?
All these organizations relied daily on their networks
to be able to perform their organizational functions,
which means that every day my team and I had to configure,
manage, operate, defend, and troubleshoot our networks
using the same principles and techniques
that you're going to learn
throughout our time together in this course.
So as you can see now,
I'm not just a by the textbook kind of instructor,
but I'm also somebody who's a practitioner
with decades of networking and cybersecurity experience.
Rest assured, you are in good hands with us.
In fact, I'm an authorized instructor
for the CompTIA Network+ exam at our company.
Dion Training is an authorized platinum delivery partner
for CompTIA because we've helped
tens of thousands of students take and pass
their certification exams on their first attempt
year after year after year.
Now, the CompTIA Network+ N10-009 certification exam
does consist of five domains or areas of knowledge
that you're going to be tested on when you sit for the exam.
The first domain is called networking concepts,
and it makes up 23% of your exam questions.
This domain will cover a wide range of topics
including network topologies, protocols,
and various networking components.
Mastery of these concepts is going to be critical
because they form the basis
for effective network configuration,
management and troubleshooting later on.
The second domain is called network implementation
and it makes up 20% of your exam questions.
This domain will assess your practical skills
and setting up and configuring network infrastructure,
and it tests your knowledge of routing technologies
like static and dynamic routing,
as well as an understanding of switching technologies,
including things like VLANs and STP.
Wireless technologies, including channel selection,
encryption and authentication methods
will also be covered here,
and it will evaluate your ability to address
the physical needs and aspects of your network installation,
including equipment placement
and environmental considerations.
In domain three, we have network operations,
and this makes up 19% of your exam questions.
This domain is focused on the operational aspects
of network management, including an understanding
of organizational documents, lifecycle management,
and network monitoring tools,
including things like SNMP and SIEMs.
Disaster recovery concepts,
including metrics like RPO and RTO will also be covered
and we'll also be implementing network services
across both IPv4 and IPv6 based networks.
We'll also take a little time to discuss
how to manage and compare network access and performance,
and how to use various protocols and communication methods
to be able to conduct your network management.
Domain four is known as network security,
and it's the smallest domain
with only 14% of your exam questions.
Now, this domain ensures that you're familiar
with the fundamental security concepts like encryption,
IAM, and common security terminologies.
We'll also make sure we understand the importance
of physical and logical network security measures,
network segmentation, and the enforcement
of security policies.
The fifth and final domain we have
is called network troubleshooting,
and this has 24% of your exam questions,
making it the single largest domain.
Domain five is going to test your problem solving skills
and examining your understanding
of the troubleshooting methodology,
your ability to resolve common cabling and interface issues,
and your approach to addressing service related problems.
We'll also talk about performance issues
like bandwidth, latency, and packet loss.
And finally, this domain will also cover
the different tools and protocols
that can be used to diagnose and resolve your network issues
to ensure that your network remains reliable
and it performs well over time.
Now, under each of these domains,
we have specific objectives
that will provide something that you must be able to do,
like explain, compare and contrast, implement, analyze,
and other keywords like these.
For instance, in objective 1.1, it states
that you must be able to, quote, explain concepts
related to the Open Systems Interconnection
or OSI reference model, end quote.
And then it provides a bow ties list
of seven different layers of the OSI model
that you need to know things about.
All these objectives are provided in a document
that CompTIA calls the exam objectives.
You can download this document from the second list
in the course as a PDF.
Now, I do recommend that you download this and print it out
because it's going to give you a great checklist
of everything we're going to cover inside of this course.
Now, as we move through the domains in this course,
we're not going to be covering them in order from one to five,
and we're not going to cover the objectives in order either.
And the reason for this is
that the official CompTIA exams objective PDF
isn't presented in an order that we want to teach from.
So instead, we want to teach it in a more logical order
so you can learn the material better.
Now, this is because CompTIA doesn't always group things
based on the right order to teach them in,
because that's not the purpose of the exam objectives PDF.
Instead, the objectives are designed
simply as a long checklist of things
that we want to make sure we're covering
as we go through the course together.
And these are all things you can possibly get
an exam question on.
So, as we go through the over 250 lessons in this course,
we're going to cover everything listed
in that objectives document, I promise you,
but we are not going to cover them in the same order
that they're listed in that objectives PDF.
Now, as a general overview, we're going to start out
by covering the basics of networking and its concepts,
and then we'll move into the physical infrastructure
such as cabling and wireless network infrastructure,
before moving into switching, IP addressing,
routing, network services,
and wide area network connections.
Then we'll continue
by moving into the cloud and virtualization
and then into network security concepts and attacks,
and then into monitoring, automation, and orchestration.
From here, we'll move into documentation,
processes, and disaster recovery.
And finally, we'll finish out our time together
by going through multiple sections
of troubleshooting concepts
so you know how to fix things when they break.
Now, as we begin each section of the course,
I'm going to stop and tell you
which objectives we're going to be covering in that section
and which domains are associated with.
That way you'll be able to see where we are
as we jump around
and you'll know where we are
in terms of the domain and objectives,
so you can cross those off your list.
This way I can give you the best course learning experience
and still map it directly back
to the exam objectives for you.
Now, on test day,
when you sit down to take your certification exam,
you're going to get a mixture of questions
across all five of these domains
and all 25 of their objectives.
Also, some tougher exam questions might even combine
objectives from different domains into a single question
to test your knowledge in a more in-depth manner.
Now, speaking of the exam, when you sit down
to take your CompTIA Network+ certification exam
at the testing center
or taking it online using the web proctoring service,
you're going to have 90 minutes to answer up to 90 questions.
Now, for the most part,
you're going to be answering multiple choice questions,
but there are a few multiple select questions
where they ask you to pick two or three correct answers
for a single question.
In addition to this,
you'll also get a few performance-based questions too
at the beginning of the exam.
Now, these PBQs or performance-based questions,
which my students like to call simulations,
will require you to perform
some kind of simulated job function
in an environment during the exam.
For example, your exam might ask you to create
a few firewall rules
to block or allow certain port into a given network,
and then you're going to use your mouse and keyboard
to perform those actions.
Or you might be asked to assign different ranges
of IP addresses to different departments
inside of an organization
based upon their unique subnetting requirements.
Now, don't worry too much about the simulations just yet.
I promise I'm going to make sure you are well prepared for them
before you sit down for the real certification exam
because I'm going to cover all the concepts needed
to answer those questions throughout this course
and the demonstrations we're going to do together.
Now, as far as the number of questions, you may have noticed
that I said you'll get up to 90 questions come exam day.
Now, in truth, you're going to get
somewhere between 70 and 90 questions
when you sit down and take the exam.
If you have more PBQs or simulations,
you'll get less multiple choice and vice versa.
Now, most candidates will see
between three to five simulations or PBQs
at the beginning of their exam,
and then about 75 to 85 multiple choice questions
as they sit through the rest of the exam on test day.
Now, when you sit down to take that exam,
the simulations will be the first questions you see,
and the rest of the exam is going to contain
all multiple choice or multiple select questions.
Now for the Network+ certification exam,
to pass the exam, you need to score at least 720 points
out of 900 on their 100 to 900 point scale.
Now, this scaled score doesn't have a direct percentile
associated with it,
but if you're answering about 75% of the questions right,
come test day, you will pass your exam.
Now, in order to take the exam,
you do have to pay an exam fee
that covers the cost of testing,
and you do this by buying an exam voucher.
Now, you can buy your exam voucher
by going to store.comptia.org,
and buying it directly from their web store.
In the CompTIA web store,
you're going to see the voucher's cost
around $375 here in the United States,
but that price does vary depending on the country
that you're taking the exam in
'cause CompTIA uses region based pricing.
Now, if you'd like to save
a little bit of money on your exam voucher though,
you can head over to diontraining.com/vouchers
and purchase your voucher directly from us
because we are a certified platinum level
CompTIA delivery partner,
and we help tens of thousands of students
every year pass their exams.
And so CompTIA gives us a discounted rate
for our exam vouchers,
and we pass on those savings to our students.
So if you're willing to take that extra step
of going to diontraining.com/vouchers
and purchase your voucher from us,
you'll save an extra 10% off the retail price
that CompTIA normally charges.
Also, we'll give you free access
to our searchable video library as a bonus
for buying the voucher from us.
Now, before we begin studying for the Network+ exam,
I want to give you my four tips
to getting the most out of this course
so you can better study for your upcoming exam.
First, we provide closed captioning
for every video in this course,
and they're captioned by real humans
to ensure a higher level of accuracy for you.
Now, many of my students speak English
as their second language,
and they really like having these captions available
so they can read along while I'm teaching.
To turn them on, simply click on the CC button
in the bottom of your video player.
There's also a transcript available for each video.
You can access and search for keywords or phrases
within that video too if you want to.
Second, when it comes to speaking,
some people say I speak too fast,
and others say I speak too slow.
Now, either way, you're going to be able to control
the speed of instruction by adjusting me faster or slower.
If I'm talking too fast for you, you can slow me down
by clicking on 0.75 or 75%.
If I'm talking too slowly for you, you can speed me up
by going to 1.5 or 150%.
Either way, faster or slower,
the choice is yours so you can learn most efficiently.
The next thing I want to point out
is that all the information I'm going to teach you
throughout this course is also available
as a downloadable study guide in PDF format
over in lesson two of this course.
If you head over to lesson two,
you'll be able to download it, print it out,
and then use it to take notes on or highlight
and circle important information
as we're going through the videos together.
This PDF is also great for offline studying
before you take the final exam
because you'll be able to see
all your notes in a single place.
Finally, I want you to know
that we have both a Facebook group
and a Discord server set up to help you succeed with this
and other certification exams.
If you have any questions or you get stuck on something
or you simply need to talk to other people
who are studying for the same exam, you can do all of that
by going to facebook.com/groups/diontraining,
or joining our Discord server at diontraining.com/discord.
Now, if you join the Facebook group or the Discord server,
we have people there ready to help answer your questions
anytime of the day or night,
as well as having other students helping you too.
Currently, we have over 50,000 students
in our Facebook group,
so if you post a question there
about the exam or the course content,
I guarantee you're going to get a pretty quick answer
right there in the group from either my team
or our other students.
Now, if you don't have Facebook or Discord
and you still need help, you can always post your questions
in the Q&A portion of this course,
and one of our Dion Training team members will answer it
within 24 hours in most cases.
When you use this support channel though,
your message is going to come in, get logged,
it's going to be assigned to me or one of my assistants
to help you with during our normal business hours.
Now with all the introductions out of the way,
let's get started learning all about networking
in this CompTIA Network+ certification course.