CompTIA CloudNetX

Campus and data center networks have settled patterns with real trade-offs. You design layer 2 and layer 3 boundaries, spine and leaf fabrics, addressing at scale and the physical installation behind them.

• Two-tier, three-tier and spine-leaf designs
• Layer 2 domains, VLAN scope and loop control
• Addressing and VLAN schemes at scale
• Overlay networks and VXLAN
• Wired campus installation: closets, cabling and power
• Power over Ethernet budgeting

You build A campus network design for three buildings, with addressing plan and closet layout.

Routing design decides how fast a network converges and how far a fault spreads. You structure interior and exterior routing, summarize and filter routes, and use virtual routing to separate tenants.

• OSPF area design and summarization
• BGP for enterprise edge and cloud connectivity
• Route redistribution and its hazards
• Route filtering and policy
• Virtual routing and forwarding
• Convergence tuning

You build A routing design for a three-site network with a cloud connection, with a failure analysis.

Cloud connectivity is now part of the core network. You compare VPN, dedicated links and software-defined WAN, plan addressing and DNS across environments, and design transit between clouds and sites.

• VPN and dedicated cloud connectivity compared
• Software-defined WAN architecture
• Transit and hub-and-spoke cloud topologies
• Address planning across providers
• Hybrid DNS and name resolution
• Egress, content delivery and cost

You build A hybrid connectivity design linking two sites and two cloud networks, with cost and failure analysis.

Resilience is designed in layers. You identify failure domains, build redundant paths and gateways, balance load across links and sites, and test the design against the failures it should survive.

• Failure domains and single points of failure
• Link aggregation and equal-cost multipath
• First-hop redundancy and gateway design
• Load balancing and anycast
• Disaster recovery for networks
• Failure testing and convergence measurement

You build A resilience review of a network design, with each failure scenario and its expected behavior.

Wireless is a shared medium, and capacity must be planned. You survey and model coverage, plan channels and density, design roaming and controllers, and support the devices that rely on them.

• RF fundamentals and propagation
• Surveys and predictive modeling
• Channel, power and density planning
• Controllers, cloud management and roaming
• High-density and outdoor environments
• Wireless for IoT and voice

You build A wireless design for a multi-floor building with channel plan and capacity estimate.

Network location should not grant trust. You apply zero trust ideas to network design, segment by identity and sensitivity, and replace broad remote access with narrower, verified paths.

• Zero trust principles applied to networks
• Microsegmentation approaches
• Policy models and enforcement points
• Zero trust network access
• Secure access service edge architecture
• Migrating from a flat network

You build A segmentation and access policy design for a flat network, with a staged migration plan.

Every device and user needs a verified identity before it reaches anything. You deploy port-based and wireless authentication, run authentication servers, use certificates and check device posture.

• 802.1X and EAP methods
• RADIUS and TACACS+ design
• Certificates for devices and users
• Network access control and posture
• Integrating with identity providers
• Administrator access to network devices

You build An authentication design for wired, wireless and administrator access, with a certificate plan.

Security tools shape traffic as well as protect it. You place firewalls, intrusion prevention, web and DNS protection and denial of service defenses, and weigh inspection against performance and privacy.

• Next-generation firewall design and rules
• Intrusion prevention and network detection
• Web gateways, proxies and TLS inspection
• DNS security
• Denial of service mitigation
• Web application and API protection

You build A security technology placement plan with rule structure and a performance impact estimate.

Wireless extends the network past the walls. You choose authentication and encryption suited to each user group, detect rogue devices, and onboard unmanaged and IoT devices without weakening the rest.

• Current wireless encryption and authentication
• Enterprise EAP types and trade-offs
• Guest, contractor and IoT networks
• Rogue access point detection
• Segmentation of wireless users
• Monitoring wireless threats

You build A wireless security design for staff, guests and IoT devices, with onboarding flow.

A network you cannot see cannot be run. You collect telemetry in several forms, set baselines and service-level views, choose monitoring tools and plan capacity from the data.

• Telemetry: SNMP, streaming, flow and packet data
• Logging and event correlation
• Baselines and anomaly detection
• Synthetic and user-experience monitoring
• Monitoring tool selection
• Capacity management and reporting

You build A monitoring architecture with telemetry sources, dashboards and alert thresholds.

Manual change does not scale and invites error. You use APIs and model-driven interfaces, build templates and a source of truth, and validate changes automatically before and after they are made.

• APIs, NETCONF and RESTCONF
• Python and Ansible for network tasks
• Templates and a source of truth
• Version control for network configuration
• Pre-change and post-change validation
• Pipelines for network change

You build An automation workflow that renders, deploys and validates a configuration change on a lab network.

Faults in hybrid networks cross boundaries nobody owns. You apply a layered method to connectivity, performance and security problems, from MTU and routing asymmetry to name resolution and certificates.

• Layered troubleshooting method
• Path analysis across sites and clouds
• MTU, fragmentation and asymmetric routing
• Name resolution and certificate faults
• Performance: latency, loss and congestion
• Packet-level analysis
• Security policy as a cause of outage

You build Diagnosis reports for six hybrid network faults, each with a trace and a fix.

One brief joins design, security, operations and repair. You architect a network for a growing organization with cloud workloads, secure and automate it, and defend the design under questioning.

• Translating a brief into requirements
• Designing core, edge and cloud connectivity
• Securing and segmenting the design
• Planning operations and automation
• Defending the design in review

You build A complete network architecture package with diagrams, security design and operating plan.