CCNA 200-301 practice test: 15 free questions

What this CCNA 200-301 practice test measures

CCNA questions are configuration and verification questions wearing a scenario. This set leans on IP connectivity (25% of the exam) and network access, and it asks for the command or the decision rather than the definition, because that is how the exam separates people who have configured a switch from people who have read about one.

The fifteen questions are grouped the way 200-301 is grouped, so the domains that carry the most marks get the most questions. Each question has one key and three distractors, and every option carries its own explanation: the key says why it is right, and each distractor says the specific thing that makes it wrong. That is the part most free question sets skip, and it is the part that turns a miss into a lesson.

Nothing here is drawn from the paid bank or from a real exam. The questions were written for this page, mapped to the published 200-301 objectives, and checked against every question in the SecLern packs so the same idea is not tested twice in different words.

How to use a practice test without wasting it

A practice test is a measurement, and a measurement you have already seen is worth less the second time. Take this one once, cold, before you revise anything: no notes, no lookups, no pausing. Fifteen questions will not take long, and the score is only useful if it reflects what you actually know today.

Mark every question you were unsure about, even the ones you got right. A lucky guess and a confident answer look identical in the score, and they are not the same thing. At the end, the questions you flagged tell you more than the ones you missed.

Then leave it alone for a while. Come back in a week and the same fifteen questions will feel different, which is useful evidence about whether the revision landed.

• Take it cold, once. Sit the fifteen questions in one go with a clock running and nothing open beside them. The result is a baseline, not a verdict.
• Read every explanation, including the ones you got right. The three distractors teach the distinctions the exam tests: which control, which order, which owner. A right answer for the wrong reason will not survive a differently worded question.
• Write the miss down by objective. Not "I got four wrong": name the objective id and the idea behind the question. That list becomes the next study session instead of a vague feeling of weakness.
• Move the miss into another format. If the miss was about a control, find the lab that uses it. If it was about order, find a PBQ that grades sequence. Reading the same explanation twice is not revision.
• Measure again with fresh questions. Repeat on unseen questions, not this set. When two fresh sittings land comfortably above the pass margin, the exam date is a scheduling decision rather than a hope.

What 200-301 actually asks, domain by domain

The percentages below are the published weights, not a study plan. They say where the marks are, which is where your calendar should go first: IP connectivity carries 25% of 200-301 and deserves the largest share of the remaining weeks.

The exam is 90 questions in 120 minutes, which is about 1.3 minutes per question on average, before you account for the 5 performance-based questions the simulation serves. That average is the whole timing argument: a question that takes three minutes has borrowed a minute from two others.

• Fundamentals (20%). Network fundamentals covers the model, the media and the addressing. Expect questions where two answers are technically true and one matches the constraint in the stem, such as a distance or a broadcast-domain requirement.
• Network access (20%). Network access is switching: VLANs, trunks, spanning tree and port security. The distractors are usually commands that exist but do not do what the stem asks, so read which mode and which interface the question names.
• IP connectivity (25%). IP connectivity carries the largest weight at 25% and is mostly routing: how a route is chosen, how a default route is written, how a subnet's broadcast address is found. Administrative distance and longest-prefix match decide most of these.
• IP services (10%). IP services is small but precise: DHCP, NAT, NTP and the first-hop redundancy protocols. Each question has one correct mechanism and three plausible ones from a different problem.
• Security (15%). Security fundamentals asks which control fits the layer: port security on the access edge, DHCP snooping against a rogue server, and unused ports shut down. The right answer is usually the least invasive one that meets the requirement.
• Automation (10%). Automation and programmability is 10% and mostly conceptual: controller-based architecture, REST APIs and the data formats they use. Knowing what a controller does and what JSON is will carry the domain.

Reading your score honestly

CCNA 200-301 is graded pass or fail, so there is no scaled number to chase: the exam reports whether you met the standard. Practising to a target percentage is still useful, but treat it as a margin, not a prediction.

A useful rule for a fifteen-question sample: anything under ten correct means at least one domain is unlearned, not unlucky. Twelve or more with two flagged guesses means the knowledge is there and the risk is pace and wording. The number that matters is not the percentage; it is which domains the misses cluster in.

The app's full simulation is the honest test: 90 questions on the real clock, with the same domain mix the objectives describe, and 5 performance-based questions in front of it. Free accounts get thirty study questions a day and three PBQs; the timed simulations are Pro. That is the line between practising and measuring.

The week after this test

Five steps, in order. Each one uses a different surface, because reading the same page twice is not revision.

• Step 1. Rebuild each missed concept in a lab rather than re-reading it: a trunk that drops a VLAN, a static route that loses to a longer prefix, a port-security violation.
• Step 2. Write the show command that proves each answer. If you cannot name the verification step, you do not yet own the configuration.
• Step 3. Drill subnetting for ten minutes a day until a /26 broadcast address takes you under fifteen seconds.
• Step 4. Take the CCNA PBQ examples page and work the config and topology tasks with the hints off; Cisco's lab items are exactly that shape.
• Step 5. Sit two full timed simulations in the last fortnight. Book only when both clear a comfortable margin, because Cisco publishes no scaled pass mark to aim at.

200-301 practice test questions