March 2023

This post represents Part 3 of 3 of STP study notes for the CCNA. Because Rapid STP (RSTP) is superior to classic Spanning Tree, it is the default on most devices now. The CCNA exam topics list only mentions Rapid Spanning Tree: subsection 2.5 says you must be able to “Interpret basic operations of Rapid […]

This post represents Part 2 of 3 of STP study notes for the CCNA. This lesson, Classic Spanning Tree port states, continues to explore the operation of Spanning Tree. More specifically, this lesson focuses on classic Spanning Tree port states (blocking, listening, learning, and forwarding), STP timers (hello, forward delay, and max age), STP Toolkit

STP (Spanning Tree Protocol) is an important topic for network engineers to understand and for the CCNA. This post represents Part 1 of 3 of STP study notes for the CCNA. This lesson, STP root bridge election and root port selection, introduces classic STP and discusses its role in regulating traffic flow within Ethernet segments.

This post covers two Cisco proprietary protocols, DTP (dynamic trunking protocol) and VTP (VLAN trunking protocol). This post looks at the basic characteristics and functions as well as the configuration and verification of DTP and VTP on Cisco switches. DTP allows Cisco switches to dynamically determine (negotiate) the status of their switchports to be either

This post represents Part 3 of 3 of VLANs study notes for the CCNA exam. This lesson covers two main topics. First, we look at two methods of configuring the native VLAN on a router, using the router subinterface, and configuring the IP address on the router’s physical interface. Second, we learn about inter-VLAN routing

This post represents Part 2 of 3 of VLANs study notes for the CCNA exam. In this lesson we learn how to configure trunk ports on Cisco switches and how to configure router on a stick (ROAS) for inter-VLAN routing. Part 1, the previous lesson, covered how to configure access ports on Cisco switches. Part

This is Part 1 of 3 of VLANs study notes for the CCNA exam. In this lesson we begin learning how to configure VLANs (Virtual Local Area Networks) on Cisco switches. More specifically, we look at how to configure and verify default VLANs and access ports. We look at the processes involved in configuring access

This is Part 1 of 2 of subnetting study notes for the CCNA exam. Subnetting is the art and science of dividing a network into smaller networks called subnets. This lesson (Part 1), Classless IPv4 addressing and subnetting, introduces the topic of subnetting and concludes with a subnetting exercise that introduces the FLSM (fixed-length subnet

In the lesson IPv4 address configuration and verification, we learned how to configure IPv4 addresses on router interfaces. This post focuses on the topic of configuring and verifying Cisco switch interfaces. This lesson looks at how switch interfaces are different from as well as similar to router interfaces. We learn how to configure L1 characteristics