Three routes into the material
Take a baseline reading
Start with the free CCNA practice test. It mixes every study area in roughly the proportions of Cisco’s blueprint, has no clock, and the report at the end splits your result by study area, which tells you where to dig first.
Work the weak study areas
The CCNA study guide shows where each of Cisco’s domains lives on this site, with our estimated share of the exam for each study area. Each study-area page opens with its map and ends with its own frames; the trap concepts (spanning-tree port roles, wildcard masks and the like) hang underneath.
Rehearse under a clock
When the reports stop showing a gap, sit the timed CCNA mock exam in one go. It holds back every verdict until you finish, then reports a raw percentage by study area, because Cisco publishes no passing score to compare it against.
Every frame type on this site
Every page type on the site, grouped by what you need it for. Each fact page settles a single point (fee, format, retake wait, version) and cites the Cisco page it comes from.
Practice
Exam facts
Study areas
- 1A Components & cablingDevice roles, 2-tier, 3-tier and spine-leaf designs, fiber vs copper, duplex faults, TCP vs UDP, virtualization.
- 1B IPv4 & subnettingMasks and prefixes, host counts, VLSM, RFC 1918 private ranges, client IP checks.
- 1C IPv6 addressingCompression, global unicast, unique local, link-local, multicast, anycast, modified EUI-64.
- 2A Switching & VLANsMAC learning and flooding, access and voice VLANs, 802.1Q trunks, native VLAN, inter-VLAN routing, CDP and LLDP.
- 2B STP & EtherChannelRoot bridge election, port roles and states, PortFast, BPDU and root guard, LACP bundles.
- 2C Wireless LANsChannels and RF basics, SSIDs, AP modes, WLC and CAPWAP, LAG, WLAN GUI, WPA2 and WPA3.
- 3A Routing & static routesRoute codes, longest prefix, administrative distance vs metric, gateway of last resort, IPv4 and IPv6 static routes.
- 3B OSPF & FHRPAdjacencies, hello and dead timers, DR/BDR, router ID, cost, and why HSRP, VRRP and GLBP exist.
- 4A NAT, DHCP & DNSStatic and pool NAT, PAT, the DHCP exchange and relay, the role of DNS.
- 4B Management & QoSConsole and SSH access, NTP, SNMP, syslog severities, QoS per-hop behavior, TFTP and FTP.
- 5A Security & VPNsThreats vs vulnerabilities vs exploits, security programs, passwords and MFA, AAA, IPsec VPNs.
- 5B ACLs & L2 securityStandard and extended ACLs, wildcards, placement, port security, DHCP snooping, dynamic ARP inspection.
- 6A Automation & APIsController-based vs traditional networks, SDN planes, REST and CRUD, JSON, Ansible and Terraform, AI in operations.
Study areas in the capture
Cisco weights only its six domains. We split them into 13 study areas and estimate each one’s share by dividing a Cisco domain’s weight evenly across its numbered topics, so the percentages below are our arithmetic and Cisco’s figures stay with Cisco’s six.
Cisco’s six domains, version 1.1
- 1.0 Network Fundamentals20%
- 2.0 Network Access20%
- 3.0 IP Connectivity25%
- 4.0 IP Services10%
- 5.0 Security Fundamentals15%
- 6.0 Automation and Programmability10%
Domain weights from Cisco’s CCNA v1.1 exam topics on the Cisco Learning Network, checked October 29, 2026. The study guide shows which of our study areas each one feeds.
What a frame on this site carries
On this site a practice item is called a frame. Our editors wrote them for study; they are not Cisco items and were never taken from an exam. Each option, the key included, is followed by a line on why it fits or fails, so a miss tells you which idea you mixed up.
Before publication, every frame was solved blind, without its key, and only then compared with the key; every disagreement was settled against the source. Some frames take a single answer and some ask for several, because Cisco’s tutorial page lists multiple choice with one and with several answers alongside drag-and-drop items and labs.
Exam numbers follow one rule: if Cisco does not publish it, it is not printed here. That covers the question count and the passing score. About Offset Zero explains who writes the pages and how the facts are checked.
Three things readers ask first
Is Offset Zero part of Cisco?
No. Offset Zero is written and run separately from Cisco and has no tie to it; the names Cisco and CCNA appear here because they are the name of the exam. Booking the exam itself goes through Cisco and Pearson VUE.
Why 13 study areas when Cisco lists six domains?
Cisco’s domains bundle topics that study better apart: IP Connectivity holds both the routing table and OSPF, and Network Access holds VLANs, spanning tree and wireless. Splitting them gives each page one coherent topic. The shares we print for the 13 are labeled estimates; the six Cisco weights are the only published figures.
What does the practice cost?
Nothing on this site: the practice set, the timed set, the study-area frames and the flashcards are free to use without an account. The app is a separate download for iPhone and Android.