How many questions are on the 200-301 exam?

The Cisco CCNA has 100 questions and a 120-minute time limit — about 1.2 minutes per question. Prepa's mock exams mirror that exact count and clock so pacing on the day feels familiar.

What score do you need to pass 200-301?

You need roughly 82% to pass the Cisco CCNA. Prepa scores every practice session on the same scale and tracks a readiness score, so you know whether you are clearing the bar before you book.

What topics does the 200-301 exam cover?

The Cisco CCNA is split across 6 official domains: Network Fundamentals (20%), Network Access (20%), IP Connectivity (25%), IP Services (10%), Security Fundamentals (15%), Automation and Programmability (10%). Prepa weights your practice to match, so you spend the most time where the exam does.

Which 200-301 domain matters most?

IP Connectivity carries the largest weight at 25% of the exam, so it decides more of your score than any other domain. Prepa detects the domains you keep missing and rebalances your study plan toward them automatically.

Can I practise for the 200-301 for free?

Yes. Prepa's free tier gives you 10 fresh AI-generated 200-301 questions every day, with a full explanation on every answer. No card required to start.

Can I pass the CCNA with no networking experience?

Yes, and many people do — but not by reading. The CCNA shows you partial configurations and command output and asks what is wrong, which is pattern recognition you can only build with your hands on a CLI. Beginners who lab consistently pass in about twelve weeks; beginners who only watch videos generally do not pass at all.

Do I need real Cisco hardware to study for the CCNA?

No. Cisco's Packet Tracer is free and covers essentially everything on the 200-301 blueprint. CML is closer to the real thing if you want it, and second-hand kit is an option, but no part of the exam requires physical hardware to prepare for.

What score do I need to pass the CCNA?

Cisco does not publish the passing score, and it varies with the form you are given. Reported thresholds tend to sit in the mid-800s on a roughly 300–1,000 scale. Treat it as a high bar and aim to be comfortably clear of it rather than trying to scrape through.

Cisco · 200-301 · Updated 2026-07-13

Cisco CCNA (200-301) Study Guide

By Falakhe Sivela · Updated 2026-07-13

Questions

100

Duration

120 min

Pass mark

82%

Domains

Exam domains and weights

Domain	Weight
Network Fundamentals	20%
Network Access	20%
IP Connectivity	25%
IP Services	10%
Security Fundamentals	15%
Automation and Programmability	10%

Each domain has its own guide covering what it tests, its full topic list, and the traps it is built around.

The Cisco Certified Network Associate is the most respected associate-level networking certification, full stop. The 200-301 exam covers network fundamentals, IP connectivity and services, security fundamentals, and automation — with enough configuration-level depth that you cannot pass it from reading alone. That difficulty is exactly why it carries weight with employers.

Who should take it

Cisco recommends a year or more of experience with Cisco solutions, but the CCNA has no prerequisites and is routinely earned by motivated beginners willing to put in lab hours. It suits network engineers, obviously, but also cloud and security engineers who want real networking depth — the subnetting, routing, and VLAN skills transfer everywhere. If you want a gentler, vendor-neutral start, look at Network+ first.

How the exam is scored

Roughly 100 questions in 120 minutes. Cisco does not publish the passing score, and — the part that changes everything — you cannot go back to a previous question. Once you submit an answer, it is final.

That single rule should reshape your strategy:

Never leave anything unanswered. There is no return trip and no penalty for guessing.
Do not stall. You cannot flag and come back, so a question you cannot crack in ninety seconds is a question you should answer on your best instinct and let go of.
Warm up before you walk in. Slow starters get punished, because the first ten questions are gone forever by the time your brain is properly online. Do a handful of practice questions the morning of the exam.

Roughly seventy seconds per question on average, and some of them are subnetting problems. That maths is why speed drills matter.

The six domains, one by one

IP Connectivity (25%)

The biggest domain: routing.

Read a routing table fluently and know how a router chooses: longest prefix match first, then administrative distance (connected 0, static 1, eBGP 20, OSPF 110, RIP 120), then the routing protocol's own metric. That ordering is tested directly and indirectly all over the exam.

OSPFv2 is the named protocol on the blueprint: areas, neighbour states and why adjacency fails (mismatched area, hello/dead timers, subnet mask, or authentication), DR/BDR election, router IDs, and show ip ospf neighbor output. If you can look at two routers stuck in EXSTART or 2-WAY and say why, you are in good shape.

Then static routing, floating static routes, and first-hop redundancy protocols (HSRP).

Network Fundamentals (20%)

Cabling, topologies, and — above all — subnetting, which you must be able to do at speed and in your head. Given 192.168.10.0/26, you should produce the network address, broadcast address, usable range, and next subnet in a few seconds, not a few minutes. Drill until it is muscle memory, because slow subnetting turns easy marks into time sinks and this exam has no time to spare.

Learn the block-size method rather than converting to binary every time: for a /26 the block is 64, so the subnets are .0, .64, .128, .192, and the broadcast of each is one below the next.

IPv6 addressing too — abbreviation rules, address types (global unicast, link-local fe80::/10, unique local), and EUI-64.

Network Access (20%)

Switching. VLANs, 802.1Q trunking, native VLANs (and the mismatch that breaks things), inter-VLAN routing, and EtherChannel.

Spanning Tree appears reliably and is best learned as a decision procedure: the switch with the lowest bridge ID (priority, then MAC) becomes the root; every non-root switch picks one root port by lowest path cost to the root; each segment picks one designated port; everything else blocks. Read show spanning-tree output until identifying the root bridge and port roles is instant.

Wireless fundamentals: SSIDs, WPA2 versus WPA3, and the split between an access point and a wireless LAN controller.

Security Fundamentals (15%)

Access control lists, which the exam loves — and where the classic mistake lives.

An ACL wildcard mask is not a subnet mask. It is (roughly) its inverse: a 0 bit means "must match," a 1 bit means "don't care." Subnet mask 255.255.255.0 becomes wildcard 0.0.0.255. To match the single host 10.1.1.5 you use wildcard 0.0.0.0 (or the host keyword). To match everything, 255.255.255.255 (or any).

Also know that ACLs have an implicit deny any at the end, that they are evaluated top-down and stop at the first match (so order matters, and a permissive rule above a restrictive one makes the restrictive one dead code), and the placement convention: standard ACLs close to the destination, extended ACLs close to the source.

Then port security, DHCP snooping, dynamic ARP inspection, and device hardening with SSH.

IP Services (10%)

NAT and PAT configuration, DHCP, DNS, NTP, SNMP, syslog (and its severity levels), and QoS concepts — marking, queuing, shaping versus policing.

Automation and Programmability (10%)

The domain most study plans undercook, and it is a tenth of the exam — enough to fail you on its own if you skip it.

REST APIs and HTTP verbs, JSON structure (be able to read a JSON blob and answer a question about it), controller-based and software-defined networking versus traditional per-device configuration, and Ansible, Puppet, and Terraform at a conceptual level — you need to know what each is for and how they differ (agentless versus agent-based, configuration management versus provisioning), not how to write them.

Lab time is the exam

Get Packet Tracer (free) or CML and build constantly. Configure OSPF between three routers, break it deliberately, and fix it. Set up VLANs and trunks and misconfigure the native VLAN to see what happens. Write an ACL, apply it in the wrong direction, and watch traffic you wanted get dropped.

CCNA questions frequently show partial configs or show command output and ask what is wrong. That is pattern recognition, and it does not come from reading. A good rule: at least a third of your total study time should be at a CLI.

A 12-week framework

Weeks 1–3 — Fundamentals and subnetting. Do not move on until subnetting is automatic. Everything downstream depends on it and it is the most common thing to be quietly bad at.

Weeks 4–6 — Switching. VLANs, trunking, STP, EtherChannel, with a lab every single session.

Weeks 7–9 — Routing, IP services, and ACLs. OSPF configuration and, more importantly, OSPF troubleshooting. ACL wildcard drills until the inversion is instinctive.

Weeks 10–11 — Security, wireless, and automation. Give automation a genuine week; do not leave it as a weekend skim.

Week 12 — Full-length timed practice and weak-area repair. Simulate the no-going-back rule: answer every question once, do not revisit, and see what that does to your score.

Working professionals should budget 8–10 hours a week.

Common pitfalls

The no-going-back format punishes slow starters and second-guessers alike.

Beyond that: misreading ACL wildcard masks (the single most common technical error on this exam), stalling on packet-path-tracing questions, and underestimating the automation domain because it feels tangential to "real" networking. It is 10% of your score and it is the easiest 10% to prepare for.

After you pass

Check the official CCNA page for current pricing and the exam topics list.

The CCNA is valid for three years. From there, CCNP Enterprise is the deep path, or you can broaden into cloud with AWS or into security with Security+ — the networking foundation makes both substantially easier.

200-301 frequently asked questions

How many questions are on the 200-301 exam?: The Cisco CCNA has 100 questions and a 120-minute time limit — about 1.2 minutes per question. Prepa's mock exams mirror that exact count and clock so pacing on the day feels familiar.
What score do you need to pass 200-301?: You need roughly 82% to pass the Cisco CCNA. Prepa scores every practice session on the same scale and tracks a readiness score, so you know whether you are clearing the bar before you book.
What topics does the 200-301 exam cover?: The Cisco CCNA is split across 6 official domains: Network Fundamentals (20%), Network Access (20%), IP Connectivity (25%), IP Services (10%), Security Fundamentals (15%), Automation and Programmability (10%). Prepa weights your practice to match, so you spend the most time where the exam does.
Which 200-301 domain matters most?: IP Connectivity carries the largest weight at 25% of the exam, so it decides more of your score than any other domain. Prepa detects the domains you keep missing and rebalances your study plan toward them automatically.
Can I practise for the 200-301 for free?: Yes. Prepa's free tier gives you 10 fresh AI-generated 200-301 questions every day, with a full explanation on every answer. No card required to start.
Can I pass the CCNA with no networking experience?: Yes, and many people do — but not by reading. The CCNA shows you partial configurations and command output and asks what is wrong, which is pattern recognition you can only build with your hands on a CLI. Beginners who lab consistently pass in about twelve weeks; beginners who only watch videos generally do not pass at all.
Do I need real Cisco hardware to study for the CCNA?: No. Cisco's Packet Tracer is free and covers essentially everything on the 200-301 blueprint. CML is closer to the real thing if you want it, and second-hand kit is an option, but no part of the exam requires physical hardware to prepare for.
What score do I need to pass the CCNA?: Cisco does not publish the passing score, and it varies with the form you are given. Reported thresholds tend to sit in the mid-800s on a roughly 300–1,000 scale. Treat it as a high bar and aim to be comfortably clear of it rather than trying to scrape through.

From the blog

CCNA 200-301: A 12-Week Plan for Working ProfessionalsHow to pass the CCNA while working full-time: a 12-week schedule at 8-10 hours a week, built around lab time, wildcard-mask drills, and the exam's no-review format.