Cisco CCNA 200-301 — Certified

The Certificate

On December 16, 2025, I passed the Cisco CCNA 200-301 exam and earned my Cisco Certified Network Associate certification. This post documents the full journey — how I studied, what worked, and what to expect on exam day.

Why CCNA

The CCNA is the industry-standard entry point for network engineering. For DevOps and infrastructure work, understanding how packets actually move — routing, switching, VLANs, ACLs — makes you a significantly better engineer. You stop treating the network as a black box.

Study Resources

These are the resources I used, in order of how much they helped:

• Jeremy’s IT Lab (YouTube + Anki deck) — The free CCNA course on YouTube is genuinely the best structured resource available. The Anki flashcard deck that accompanies it is indispensable for memorizing commands and concepts.
• Cisco Packet Tracer — Free network simulator from Cisco. I built every topology from the course notes by hand. Hands-on practice with routing protocols, VLANs, STP, and NAT is non-negotiable.
• Boson ExSim — The closest thing to the real exam in terms of question style and difficulty. If you can consistently score 80%+ on Boson, you’re ready.
• Official Cert Guide (Wendell Odom) — Dense but thorough. I used it as a reference rather than reading cover to cover.

Topics That Required the Most Work

Some areas needed significantly more time than others:

• Spanning Tree Protocol (STP/RSTP) — Port states, port roles, election process, and the differences between classic STP and RSTP tripped me up early on.
• OSPF — Understanding DR/BDR election, LSA types, and area design took repeated labbing to solidify.
• Subnetting — You need to be fast. Practice until you can subnet any /24 or /16 block in under 30 seconds without a calculator.
• Wireless — Often underestimated. WPA2/WPA3, BSS/ESS architecture, and controller-based vs. autonomous APs are all fair game.
• Automation & Programmability — REST APIs, JSON, YANG/NETCONF, and the difference between SDN architectures. This section is newer and easy to skip — don’t.

The Exam Day

The exam is 120 minutes, approximately 100–120 questions. Question types include:

• Multiple choice (single and multiple answer)
• Drag and drop
• Simulation labs (configure a device in a simulated terminal)

The simulations are the most important to practice. You will be asked to configure interfaces, set up OSPF neighbors, troubleshoot a VLAN mismatch, or verify routing tables. show commands are your best friend — know them cold.

show ip route
show ip ospf neighbor
show interfaces trunk
show vlan brief
show spanning-tree
show ip nat translations

What’s Next

The CCNA is a foundation, not a destination. The logical progression from here:

• CCNP Enterprise — Deep dive into advanced routing (EIGRP, BGP, advanced OSPF) and SD-WAN.
• Network Automation — Python with Netmiko/NAPALM, Ansible network modules, and Terraform for network infrastructure.
• Security — Mapping the network knowledge directly into security: ACL hardening, zone-based firewalls, and eventually the CCNP Security track.

Earned: December 16, 2025 — Cisco CCNA 200-301