CCNA study guide: a week-by-week plan to pass 200-301
A structured roadmap that tells you what to study, in what order, and — most importantly — what to lab at each step. This plan assumes roughly 8–12 hours per week and weights your time toward the domains that carry the most exam points.
The read → lab → test method
Every week of this plan repeats the same loop, because it’s the loop that passes the exam:
Learn the concept from a book or video until you can explain it out loud.
Reproduce it on a live CLI. Configure it, verify it with show commands, then break it and fix it.
Answer practice questions on the topic to surface gaps, then lab anything you miss.
Most candidates who struggle skip the middle step. Simulation and troubleshooting items are worth a large share of the exam and can’t be passed by reading alone.
The 9-week CCNA study plan
Adjust the pace to your background, but keep the domain order — each week builds on the last.
OSI/TCP-IP models, cabling, IPv4 addressing, and subnetting until it's automatic. Learn how switches and routers make forwarding decisions.
Lab goal: Build a small LAN, assign addressing, and verify with show ip interface brief and ping.
VLANs, 802.1Q trunking, inter-VLAN routing, spanning tree, and EtherChannel. Understand access vs. trunk ports cold.
Lab goal: Create a two-switch VLAN topology with a trunk, then add router-on-a-stick and confirm inter-VLAN ping.
The routing table, static and default routes, and OSPFv2 — the single largest domain. Practice reading show ip route fluently.
Lab goal: Generate a multi-router OSPF area 0 lab; break an adjacency and troubleshoot it back to FULL.
DHCP, NAT/PAT, NTP, SSH, Syslog, and QoS concepts. Know the DORA process and inside/outside NAT boundaries.
Lab goal: Configure a DHCP server with relay and PAT to a single public address; verify with show ip nat translations.
Standard and extended ACLs, port security, DHCP snooping, DAI, and device hardening. Know ACL placement rules.
Lab goal: Write an extended ACL to permit specific traffic and confirm the deny path fails with a targeted ping.
Controller-based networking, REST APIs, and JSON. Then take full practice exams and lab anything you miss.
Lab goal: Review weak domains by regenerating labs for each missed practice question.
Study tips that actually move the needle
Subnet until it’s reflexive
Subnetting shows up throughout the exam and under a timer. Drill it daily in the first two weeks until you can find a subnet, mask, and host range in your head. It pays off in every later domain.
Learn the show commands, not just the config
The exam rewards verification. For each topic, learn the one or two show commands that prove it works — show ip ospf neighbor for adjacencies, show vlan brief for VLANs, show ip nat translations for NAT — and run them in a lab until the output is familiar.
Test early and often
Don’t save practice questions for the end. Use them each week to check the domain you just studied, and treat every wrong answer as a labbing assignment.
Put the plan into practice
Generate a lab for this week’s domain and start configuring — free.
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