• Entry- to mid-level networking professionals, network engineers, support technicians
• IT staff who manage or intend to manage enterprise networks
• Students or career changers seeking foundational networking expertise and certification
• Professionals preparing to take the CCNA (200-301) exam

• No formal prerequisites (Cisco allows anyone to sit the exam)
• Basic familiarity with computers, operating systems, and networking concepts helps smooth the learning curve
• Hands-on lab access or simulator exposure is strongly recommended

• Design, configure, and manage small to medium networks
• Implement VLANs, trunking, spanning tree, EtherChannel
• Configure and troubleshoot IPv4/IPv6 addressing, routing, OSPF, and redundancy
• Deploy NAT, DHCP, DNS, SNMP, NTP, and remote management services
• Apply security controls: ACLs, port security, DHCP snooping, wireless security
• Use basic automation tools and scripts to manage network devices
• Interpret network behavior, logs, and diagnosic output for troubleshooting
• Prepare and sit for the Cisco CCNA 200-301 exam with confidence

• Devices: routers, L2/L3 switches, firewalls/IPS, APs, controllers, endpoints
• Network topologies (2-tier, 3-tier, spine-leaf, WAN, SOHO)
• Cabling & interfaces (copper, fiber) and diagnosing link issues
• TCP vs UDP
• IPv4 addressing & subnetting
• IPv6 address types, prefixes, addressing
• Wireless fundamentals, encryption, SSIDs
• Virtualization (hypervisors, VRF, containers)
• Switching concepts: MAC learning, frame flooding, aging, CAM table

• VLANs, trunking (802.1Q), native VLANs
• Interswitch connectivity, trunk ports
• Discovery protocols (CDP, LLDP)
• EtherChannel / Link Aggregation (LACP)
• Spanning Tree / Rapid PVST+: root bridge, port roles, port states, PortFast, BPDU guard, loop guard

• Routing table components, longest match forwarding
• IPv4 / IPv6 static routes, default routes
• OSPFv2 in a single area: adjacency, DR/BDR, route calculation
• First Hop Redundancy Protocols (e.g. HSRP, VRRP, GLBP)

• NAT (static, dynamic, PAT)
• DHCP (client, relay)
• DNS, NTP
• SNMP, syslog, FTP/TFTP
• QoS per-hop behavior, traffic classification, marking
• SSH, remote access, device management

• Security concepts: threats, vulnerabilities, mitigation
• Device access control: local passwords, RBAC, authentication methods
• Password policies, multifactor authentication
• ACLs (standard, extended)
• Layer-2 security: DHCP snooping, dynamic ARP inspection, port security
• Wireless security (WPA2, WPA3)
• VPN basics (IPsec)

• Introduction to network automation, intent-based networking
• Controller-based architectures and SDN concepts
• APIs: REST, northbound/southbound
• Configuration management tools (Ansible, Puppet, etc.)
• Data formats (JSON, YAML), HTTP verbs, CRUD operations
• Model-driven programmability (YANG, NETCONF/RESTCONF)