Network+ Practice test questions

Question 1

A technician added memory to a router, but the router never recognizes that memory. The router is then powered down, and the technician relocates all of the memory to different modules. On startup, the router does not boot and displays memory errors. Which of the following is the MOST likely cause of this issue?

Answer 1

A) VTP (VLAN Trunking Protocol)
B) Driver Update
C) ESD (electrostatic discharge)
D) Halon particles

Answer:
The most likely cause is that the memory chips are faulty because they have suffered from electrostatic discharge (ESD) during the chips’ installation and movement.

Question 2

A technician has installed an 802.11n network, and most users can see speeds of up to 300Mbps. A few of the users have an 802.11n network card but cannot get speeds higher than 108Mbps. What should the technician do to fix the issue?

Answer 2

A) Upgrade the OS version to 64-bit
B) Roll back the firmware on the WLAN card
C) Install a vulnerability patch
D) Upgrade the WLAN care driver

Answer:
Wireless N networks can support up to 600Mbps with the network cards’ proper software drivers. Without them, they can only achieve 108Mbps since they cannot communicate with the increased data compression rates.

Question 3

Which of the following provides origin authenticity through source authentication, data integrity through hash functions, and confidentiality through encryption protection for IP packets?

Answer 3

A) IPSEC
B) SHA
C) DES
D) CRC

Answer:
OBJ-3.4: Internet Protocol Security (IPSec) is a network protocol that encrypts and authenticates data sent over a network. All other choices offer encryption or authentication.

Question 4

Routing prefixes, which are assigned in blocks by IANA and distributed by the Regional Internet Registry (RIR), are known as what?

Answer 4

A) Network handle
B) Autonomous system number
C) Route aggregation
D) Top level domain

Answer:
OBJ-1.3: An ASN (or Autonomous System Number) is used to control routing with BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) routing protocols to route traffic across the network.

Question 5

Which of the following is used to proxy client requests for IP configurations across different network segments?

Answer 5

A) DHCP relay
B) SOCKS
C) Teredo tunneling
D) Reverse proxy

Answer:
OBJ-1.8: A DHCP client is an Internet host using DHCP to obtain configuration parameters such as an IP address. A DHCP relay agent is any host that forwards DHCP packets between clients and servers. Relay agents forward requests and replies between clients and servers when they are not on the same physical subnet.

Question 6

A technician installs a new WAP, and users in the area begin to report poor performance. The technician uses ping, and only 3 of the 5 packets respond. When the technician tests the connection from a wired connection, it responds with 5 of 5 packets. What tool should the network technician use next?

Answer 6

A) Port scanner
B) Interface Monitoring tool
C) Packet capture tool
D) Spectrum analyzer tool

Answer:
OBJ-5.2: A spectrum analyzer is a device that displays signal amplitude (strength) as it varies by signal frequency. Since the issue only occurs when connecting wirelessly, it is almost like a spectrum interference issue.

Question 7

A network technician connects three temporary office trailers with a point-to-multipoint microwave radio solution in a wooded area. The microwave radios are up, and the network technician can ping devices in all office trailers. However, connectivity is sporadic. What is the cause of this issue?

Answer 7

A) Latency
B) Throttling
C) Interference
D) Split horizon

Answer:
OBJ-5.4: As a process of elimination, throttling slows down the speed, and latency slows down speed even further. Split horizon prevents loops, so it only makes sense that interference is the choice. Also, interference causes drops in connections in many circumstances.

Question 8

You are troubleshooting the network connectivity between a remote server and your workstation. Which of the following tools should you use to determine the connection path between your workstation and the remote server?

Answer 8

A) pathping
B) tcpdump
C) netstat
D) ping

Answer:
OBJ-5.2: Pathping works on Windows systems from the command line. This command provides details of the path between two hosts and Ping-like statistics for each node in the path based on samples taken over a time period, depending on how many nodes are between the start and end host. The advantages of PathPing over ping and traceroute are that each node is pinged as the result of a single command and that nodes’ behavior is studied over an extended time period, rather than the default ping sample of four messages or default traceroute single route trace. The disadvantage is that it takes a total of 25 seconds per hop to show the ping statistics. This makes pathping the best option to use.

Question 9

Which of the following network protocols is used to send email from one server to another server?

Answer 9

A) RTP
B) SNMP
C) POP
D) SMTP

Answer:
OBJ-1.1: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is a well-known application that uses port 25 for sending email from one server to another server.

Question 10

A network administrator is tasked with building a wireless network in a new building located right next door. The wireless clients should not have visibility to one another but should have visibility to the wired users. Users must seamlessly migrate between the buildings while maintaining a constant connection to the LAN. How should he configure the new wireless network in the new building?

Answer 10

A) Use the same SSIDs on different channels and AP isolation.
B) Use the same SSIDs on different channels and VLANS
C) Use the same SSIDs on the same channels with VLANS
D) Use the same SSIDs on the same channels with AP isolation.

Answer:
OBJ-1.6: For users to be able to seamlessly migrate between the two buildings, both Access Points (AP) must use the same SSIDs. They must be on different channels, though. Otherwise, interference would occur. Access Point (AP) isolation is a technique for preventing mobile devices connected to an AP from communicating directly with each other.

Question 11

At which of the following OSI layer does QoS operate?

Answer 11

A) Layer 1
B) Layer 3
C) Layer 5
D) Layer 7

Answer:
OBJ-1.2: Quality of Service (QoS) occurs at both Layer 2 and Layer 3 of the OSI Model.

Question 12

You are trying to connect to a router using SSH to check its configuration. Your attempts to connect to the device over SSH keep failing. You ask another technician to verify that SSH is properly configured, enabled on the router, and allows access from all subnets. She attempts to connect to the router over SSH from her workstation and confirms all the settings are correct. Which of the following steps might you have missed in setting up your SSH client preventing you from connecting to the router?

Answer 12

A) Change default credentials
B) Perform file hashing
C) Generate a new SSH key
D) Update firmware

Answer:
OBJ-3.4: When configuring your SSH connection, you must ensure that a key is established between your client and the server. If you never setup an SSH key, you will need to generate a new key to get SSH to connect properly. Since the other technician was able to connect on her machine, we can rule out a SSH server issue, so it must be an issue with your account or client. The only option that relates solely to your account or client is the possibility that a key was not generated.

Question 13

Your network relies on the use of ATM cells. At which layer of the OSI model do ATM cells operate?

Answer 13

A) Network
B) Session
C) Transport
D) Data Link

Answer:
OBJ-2.5: In the data link layer (layer 2) of the OSI model, the basic unit of transfer is called a frame. In an ATM network, these frames are called cells and are of a fixed (53 octets or bytes) length that allows for faster switching of the cells across the network.

Question 14

What tool would a network technician use to troubleshoot a span of single-mode fiber cable?

Answer 14

A) Punchdown tool
B) Spectrum analyzer
C) Ethernet tester
D) OTDR (optical time-domain reflectometer

Answer:
Explanation
OBJ-5.2: The other answers are used with copper cables (like CAT5). An optical time-domain reflectometer (OTDR) is an optoelectronic instrument used to characterize an optical fiber. An OTDR is the optical equivalent of an electronic time-domain reflectometer.

Question 15

Which of the following network concepts is prevented by using a split-horizon?

Answer 15

A) Large routing tables
B) Duplicate addresses
C) Network collisions
D) Routing loops

Answer:
OBJ-4.6: In computer networking, split-horizon route advertisement is a method of preventing routing loops in distance-vector routing protocols by prohibiting a router from advertising a route back onto the interface from which it was learned.

Question 16

When installing a network cable with multiple strands, a network technician pulled the cable past a sharp edge and exposed the copper conductor on several of the wire strands. These exposed wires come into contact with each other forming an electrical connection. Which of the following conditions was created?

Answer 16

A) Short
B) Open
C) Electrostatic discharge
D) Crosstalk

Answer:
OBJ-2.1: A short in electrical terms is an abbreviation for a short circuit. This generally means an unintended connection between two points allowing current to flow where it should not. In your particular case, it means that a cable is damaged and that two or more of the conductors are connected, causing the cable to fail.

Question 17

The company’s corporate headquarters provided your branch office a portion of their Class C subnet to use at a new office location. You must allocate the minimum number of addresses using CIDR notation in order to accommodate each department’s needs.
What is the correct CIDR notation for the Marketing department’s subnet which requires 11 devices?

Answer 17

Since the Marketing department needs 11 devices plus a network ID and broadcast IP, it will require 13 IP addresses. The smallest subnet that can fit 13 IPs is a /28 (16 IPs).

Question 18

What can be issued from the command line to find the layer 3 hops to a remote destination?

Answer 18

Traceroute will determine every hop between the host and the destination using ICMP. Traceroute is used for Linux and UNIX systems. Tracert is used for Windows systems.

Question 19

A college needs to provide wireless connectivity in a cafeteria with a minimal number of WAPs. What type of antenna will provide the BEST coverage?

Answer 19

High gain antennas put out increased signal strengths and can reach further with fewer WAPs.

Question 20

You are configuring a network to utilize SNMPv3 to send information from your network devices back to an SNMP manager. Which of the following SNMP options should you enable to ensure the data is transferred confidentially?

Answer 20

In SNMPv3, the authPriv option ensures that the communications are sent with authentication and privacy. This uses MD5 and SHA for authentication and DES and AES for privacy and encryption.

Question 21

You are working as a wireless networking technician and running a wireless controller to aid in network administration. Your supervisor has requested that you implement a centralized authentication service. Which of the following devices should you install and configure if you want to decrease the amount of time spent administering the network while still providing a centralized authentication service for your users?

Answer 21

A Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service (RADIUS) server will enable the wireless clients to communicate with a central server to authenticate users and authorize their access to the requested service or system. None of the other options presented are designed to support centralized authentication services by themselves, but instead, use a protocol like RADIUS to perform those functions.

Question 22

Lynne is a home user who would like to share music throughout the computers in her house using an external USB hard drive connected to a router that she purchased over a year ago. The manufacturer states that the router can recognize drives up to 4TB in size, but she cannot get her 3TB hard drive to show up on the network. What should Lynne do to fix this problem?

Answer 22

Routers can be updated by conducting a firmware flash. This is similar to upgrading or patching your computer’s operating system or even updating a device driver. By flashing the firmware, it can provide the ability to communicate with newer devices.

Question 23

A network technician needs to monitor the network to find a user who is browsing websites against the company policy. What should the technician use to view the website and find the user browsing it?

Answer 23

Packet Sniffers can capture and analyze network user traffic. This information can be queried to view website addresses, contents, and sometimes even the password information. This differs from an intrusion detection system in that IDS’ wait to receive implicitly-malicious data in a network before logging the event.

Question 24

A new piece of malware attempts to exfiltrate user data by hiding the traffic and sending it over a TLS-encrypted outbound traffic over random ports. What technology would be able to detect and block this type of traffic?

Answer 24

A Web Application Firewall (WAF) or Application-Aware Firewall would detect both the accessing of random ports and TLS encryption and could identify it as suspicious, whereas Stateless would inspect port number being used by the traffic leaving. IDS only analyzes incoming traffic. Therefore it would not be able to see this activity as suspicious.

Question 25

A network administrator needs to install a centrally located firewall that needs to block specific incoming and outgoing IP addresses without denying legitimate return traffic. Which type of firewall should the administrator install?

Answer 25

A stateful firewall enhances security through packet filtering, and these types of firewalls also keep track of outbound requests and open the port for the returning traffic to enter the network.

Question 26

A client has combined the voice-data circuit from a provider and gets a maximum download and upload speeds of 2.0Mbps. Which type of service is MOST likely being used by the client?

Answer 26

E1 service provides symmetric 2.0 Mbps of data service. It can handle voice and digital services (with a mix-n-match service). E1 is the European signal of DS1. E1 has higher bandwidth than T1 because of T1 reserves bits for overhead. VDSL and ADSL provide different upload and download rates, but this question shows symmetric upload and download rate was used.

Question 27

What allows a telecommunication company to test the circuits of customers remotely?

Answer 27

Smart jacks typically provide diagnostic capabilities. A common capability provided by a smart jack is loopback, such that the signal from the telephone company is transmitted back to the telephone company. This allows the telephone company to test the line from the central office without having test equipment at the customer site.

Question 28

Rick is upset that he was passed over for a promotion. He decides to take revenge on his nemesis, Mary, who got the job instead of him. Rick sets up a man-in-the-middle attack against Mary’s computer by redirecting any layer 2 traffic destined for the gateway to his own computer first. Rick is careful only to affect the traffic associated with Mary’s computer and not the entire network. Which type of man-in-the-middle attack is Rick conducting against Mary?

Answer 28

Based on the scenario, we can eliminate evil twin (focused on wireless access points) and IP spoofing (since this affects layer 3 traffic). While MAC spoofing the gateway’s address might work, it would also affect every computer on this subnet. By conducting an ARP cache poisoning attack, Rick can poison the cache and replace Mary’s computer’s MAC association with his own, allowing him to become the man-in-the-middle between Mary and the default gateway.

Question 29

Which type of wireless technology are OFDM, QAM, and QPSK examples of?

Answer 29

Common types of modulation include Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM), and Quadrature Phase-shift keying (PSK).

Question 30

You are configuring a point-to-point link and want to ensure it is configured for the most efficient use of your limited pool of available public IP addresses. Which of the following subnet masks would be BEST to use in this scenario?

Answer 30

For the exam, if you see the option of /30 or /31, remember, they can be used for point-to-point networks.
The most efficient subnet mask for a point-to-point link is actually a /31 subnet, which only provides 2 addresses. This will only work if both routers use a newer routing protocol like OSPF, IS-IS, EIGRP, or RIPv2 (or above). The tried and true method uses a /30, though, which uses 4 IP addresses. The first is the network IP, the last is the broadcast, and the other 2 IPs can be assigned to the routers on either end of the point-to-point network.

Question 31

You have installed and configured a new wireless router. The clients and hosts can ping each other. The WAN connection is 10Gbp/s. The wired clients have fast connections, but the wireless clients are slow to ping and browse the Internet. Which of the following is MOST likely the cause of the slow speeds experienced by the wireless clients?

Answer 31

If interference in the wireless spectrum occurs, more retransmissions will be needed (and thereby slowing speeds experienced). All the other answers will not cause a slow down of only the wireless network.
AND a high signal to noise ratio is a good thing on wireless networks.

Question 32

Which of the following WAN technologies would MOST likely be used to connect several remote branches that have no fiber or satellite connections?

Answer 32

POTS is the Plain Old Telephone System and is connected to almost every facility in the United States. DSL and dial-up services can be received over POTS.

Question 33

Which communication technology would MOST likely be used to increase bandwidth over an existing fiber-optic network by combining multiple signals at different wavelengths?

Answer 33

Dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) is a high-speed optical network type commonly used in MANs (metropolitan area networks). DWDM uses as many as 32 light wavelengths on a single fiber, where each wavelength can support as many as 160 simultaneous connections.

Question 34

A network technician determines that two dynamically-assigned workstations have duplicate IP addresses. What command should the technician use to correct this issue?

Answer 34

The first thing to do is to release the IP address using the command ipconfig /release. Next, the technician should dynamically assign another IP address using the command ipconfig /renew.

Question 35

Which of the following is MOST likely to use an RJ-11 connector to connect a computer to an ISP using a POTS line?

Answer 35

An analog modem is a device that converts the computer’s digital pulses to tones that can be carried over analog telephone lines and vice versa. The other type of Internet connection that occurs over an RJ-11 (phone line) is DSL

Question 36

A technician installs three new switches to a company’s infrastructure. The network technician notices that all the switch port lights at the front of each switch flash rapidly when powered on and connected. Additionally, there are rapidly flashing amber lights on the switches when they started up the next day. What is happening to the switches?

Answer 36

The switch port lights flashing is indicating that the switch is performing the spanning tree process. The Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) is responsible for identifying links in the network and shutting down the redundant ones, preventing possible network loops. To do so, all switches in the network exchange BPDU messages between them to agree upon the root bridge.

Question 37

The Chief Information Officer (CIO) wants to improve the security of the company’s data. Which management control should be implemented to ensure employees are using encryption to transmit any sensitive information over the network?

Answer 37

Policies are plans that describe the goal of an established procedure (Acceptable use, Physical Security, or VPN access), while the standards are the mechanisms implemented to achieve that goal. VPN and HTTPS are examples of standards.

Question 38

Which of the following applies to data as it travels from Layer 1 to Layer 7 of the OSI model?

Answer 38

A) Tagging
B) Encapsulation
C) Tunneling
D) De-encapsulaton

Answer:
De-encapsulation occurs as the data travels up the OSI layers. As information travels down the OSI model from layer 7 to layer 1, it is encapsulated along the way.

Question 39

An outside organization has completed a penetration test for a company. One of the report items reflects the ability to read SSL traffic from the web server. What is the MOST likely mitigation for this reported item?

Answer 39

Ensure patches are deployed

A patch is designed to correct a known bug or fix a known vulnerability, such as in this case, to read SSL traffic in a piece of software.

Question 40

A network technician needs to connect two switches. The technician needs a link between them that is capable of handling 10 Gbps of throughput. Which of the following media would BEST meet this requirement?

Answer 40

To achieve 10 Gbps, you should use CAT 6a or a fiber cable. Since CAT6a isn’t an option, fiber is the best answer here.
CAT 5e can only operate up to 100 meters at 1 Gbps of speed.

Question 41

What is an example of a signaling protocol used in VoIP telephony?

Answer 41

SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) is used for VoIP and audio/video conferencing.
You could use the process of elimination: t
VRRP is the (virtual router redundancy protocol) that automatically assigns IP routers to hosts,
H 323 is something that works with A/V (audio visual),
RTSP is a real time streaming protocol designed to control media servers,
SIP is a session initiation protocol. SIP is a signaling protocol used on the application layer.

Question 42

What is considered a classless routing protocol?

Answer 42

IS-IS is known as a classless protocol.
Classless routing protocols are those protocols that include the subnet mask information when the routing tables or updates are exchanged. Other classless routing protocols include EIGRP, RIPv2 (or newer), and OSPF.

Question 43

A company is having a new T1 line installed. Which of the following does this connection MOST likely terminate to?

Answer 43

The telecom company usually terminates the circuits at the Main Distribution Facility (MDF).

Question 44

Question 48: Incorrect, Test 1

Answer 44

This will permit traffic from the internal network (192.168.0.0/24) from any port to access the external network (any IP) to port 80 (HTTP). Since this is a stateless firewall, you must include the SPORT (source port) ANY to allow the outbound connection through the firewall.

Question 45

Which type of equipment should be used for telecommunications equipment and have an open design?

Answer 45

2/4 post racks

Question 46

Which connector type is used to terminate DS3 connections in a telecommunications facility?

Answer 46

A DS3 (Digital Signal 3) is also known as a T3 line with a maximum bandwidth of 44.736 Mbit/s. DS3 uses 75 ohm coaxial cable and BNC connectors.

Question 47

What wireless characteristic does channel bonding improve?

Answer 47

Channel Bonding is used to reduce redundancy or increase throughput, directly affecting the connection speed of a wireless connection.
–Signal strength only refers to the maximum transmitted power by an antenna.

Question 48

A coworker has improperly configured the AS number on the device. What might be the result of this?

Answer 48

BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) is used to route data between autonomous systems (AS).

• A collection of networks that fall within the same administrative domain is called an autonomous system (AS).
• The routers within an AS use an interior gateway protocol, such as the Routing Information Protocol (RIP) or the Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) protocol, to exchange routing information among themselves.

Question 49

What might cause the interface not to come up when the fiber has been plugged in on both ends?

Answer 49

Wavelength mismatch
–Wavelength mismatch is when two different transmitters at each end of the cable have either longer or shorter wavelengths. Both transmitters have to be identical on each end of the cable.

Question 50

A network tech is verifying the connectivity on new switches but finds that when he pings one of the switches using its IP address, he receives “Destination Unreachable”. What kind of issue is this?

Answer 50

Split horizon is a method of preventing a routing loop in a network. If it is misconfigured, the switches would be unable to communicate with each other.

Question 51

A network administrator wants to increase the speed and fault tolerance of a connection between two network switches. To achieve this, which protocol should the administrator use?

Answer 51

LACP (Link Aggregation Control Protocol) provides a method to control the bundling of several physical ports together to form a single logical channel.

Question 52

You want to install a perimeter device on the network that will help ensure FTP commands are not being sent out over port 25. Which of the following devices would allow for deep packet inspection to catch this type of activity?

Answer 52

Layer 7 firewalls are application-filtering firewalls. FTP traffic does not usually travel over port 25, and should travel over port 21. By using a Layer 7 firewall, the device can perform a deep packet inspection (DPI) to identify which application or protocol is actually being used to send traffic over a given port.