Cheat Sheet on

CCNA
TERMINOLOGIES
Keyword Definition
CISCO: Cisco Systems, Inc. is an American multinational technology company
headquartered in San Jose, California, that designs, manufactures and sells
networking equipment.

CCNA: Cisco Certified Network Associate is an associate level certification that tests
the ability of candidate to create, install and maintain a small/medium size
network
Network: A network is basically all of the components (hardware and software) involved
in connecting computers together across small and large distances. The
purpose of using networks is to provide easier access to information, thus
increasing productivity for users.

Local area network (LAN): A LAN is used to connect networking devices together that are in a very close
geographic area, such as a floor of a building, a building itself, or a campus
environment.

Wide Area Network A WAN is used to connect LANs together. WANs are typically used when the
(WAN): LANs that need to be connected are separated by a large distance. Four basic
types of connections, or circuits, are used in WAN services: circuit-switched,
cell-switched, packet-switched, and dedicated connections.

Bits: Binary represents protocol data units (PDUs) in bits. Two bit valueson (1)
and off (0)are used by computers to encode information. Bits are physical
layer PDUs.

Bridge: A bridge solves layer 2 bandwidth and collision problems. It typically supports
216 ports and performs store-and-forward switching.

Hub: A hub is a physical layer device that provides a logical bus structure for
Ethernet. A hub will take a physical layer signal from one interface and
replicate that signal on all of its other interfaces.

Switch: A switch is a layer 2 device that is used to solve bandwidth and collision
problems. Switches perform their switching in hardware called ASICs. All
switches support store-and-forward switching. Some switches also support
cut-through and fragment-free switching. Switches typically support both half-
and full-duplexing. Switches come in many sizes, and some have more than
100 ports.

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Media Access Control The data link layer uses MAC, or hardware, addresses for communication. For
(MAC) Address: LAN communications, each machine on the same connected media type needs
a unique MAC address.

A CAM table is an old bridging term that describes the table that holds the MAC
Content-Addressable addresses of devices and the ports off of which they reside. The layer 2 device
Memory (CAM) Table: uses this to make switching decisions. This is also referred to as a port or MAC
address table
Router: Routers function at the network layer. Because routers operate at a higher layer
than layer 2 devices and use logical addressing, they provide many more
advantages. Routers perform the following functions: define logical addressing
schemes, contain broadcasts and multicasts, find layer 3 paths to destinations,
connect different media types and switch packets on the same interface using
VLANs.
Routing Table: Routers will use network numbers to make routing decisions: how to get a
packet to its destination. They will build a routing table, which contains path
information. This information includes the network number, which interface the
router should use to reach the network number, the metric of the path, and how
the router learned about this network number.

Repeater: A repeater is a physical layer device that will take a signal from one interface and
replicate it to another. An Ethernet hub is an example of a repeater. Repeaters
are typically used when you need to extend the distance of a cable.

Application-Specific ASICs are specialized processors that can do very few tasks but can do them
Integrated Circuit extremely well. Processors, on the other hand, can perform many tasks, but are
(ASIC): not necessarily optimized for these tasks.

Physical Topology: A physical topology describes how devices are physically cabled together.

Star Topology: A star topology contains a central device that has many point-to-point
connections to other devices. Star topologies are used in environments where
many devices need to be connected together, but where a full mesh is cost-
prohibitive.

Rollover Cable: A rollover cable is used for console connections and looks like an Ethernet CAT-5
cable; however, a rollover cable is proprietary to Cisco and will not work for
other types of connections. The rollover cable has eight wires inside its plastic
shielding and two RJ-45 connectors at each end. Each side of the rollover cable
reverses the pins compared to the other side: pin 1 on one side is mapped to pin
8 on the other side; pin 2 is mapped to pin 7, and so on and so forth.

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Straight-through Cable: An Ethernet straight-through cable has pin 1 on one side
connected to pin 1 on the other side, pin 2 to pin 2, and so
on. A straight-through cable is used to connect two or
more different layer devices like switch to router, switch
to pc or pc to router and so on.
Crossover Cable: An Ethernet crossover cable crosses over two sets of wires:
pin 1 on one side is connected to pin 3 on the other and pin
2 is connected to pin 6. A crossover cable is used to
connect two or more same layer devices like switch to
switch, pc to pc or router to router and so on.
Store-and-forward Switching Store-and-forward switching is the most basic form of
switching, in which the layer 2 devices must pull the entire
frame into the buffer of the port and check the CRC of the
frame before that device will perform any additional
processing on the frame.
Subnet Mask: Each TCP/IP address has three components: a network
component, a host component, and a subnet mask. The
function of the subnet mask is to differentiate between the
network address, the host addresses, and the directed
broadcast address for a network or subnet.
Variable-Length Subnet Masking (VLSM): VLSM allows you to have more than one mask for a given
class of address, albeit a Class A, B, or C network number.
Classful protocols such as RIPv1 and IGRP do not support
VLSM. Classless Protocols supports VLSM.
Broadcast: A broadcast is a PDU sent to all devices. The destination
MAC address denotes all devices on a segment
(FFFF.FFFF.FFFF). A destination IP address of
255.255.255.255; represents all devices
Packet: A packet is a PDU used at the network layer. It is also
referred to as a datagram in the TCP/IP protocol stack.
Address Resolution Protocol (ARP): ARP is an Internet layer protocol that helps TCP/IP devices
finds other devices in the same broadcast domain.
Basically, ARP resolves a layer 3 IP address of a destination
to the layer 2 MAC address of the destination.

Gratuitous ARP: A gratuitous ARP is an ARP reply that is generated without a

corresponding ARP request. This is commonly used when a
device might change its IP address or MAC address and
wants to notify all other devices on the segment about the
change so that the other devices have the correct
information in their local ARP tables.
Private IP address: When devices want to communicate with each other, each
device needs a unique address. RFC 1918 created a private
address space that any company can use internally. These
addresses include 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, and
192.168.0.0/16. Private IP addresses are nonInternet
routable. You must use address translation to translate a
private address to a public one if you want to communicate
with devices on a public network, such as the Internet.
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Protocol: A protocol is used to implement an application. Some
protocols are open standard, meaning that many vendors
can create applications that can interoperate with each
other, while others are proprietary, meaning that they
work only with a particular application.

Domain Name System (DNS): DNS resolves names to IP addresses. DNS is a TCP/IP
application that other applications, such as FTP, telnet, web
browsers, and e-mail, use to resolve the names a user
enters to real IP addresses.

Frame: A frame is a PDU used at the data link layer. With IEEE, two
PDUs are used: one for LLC (802.2) and one for MAC (802.2
or 802.5).

Ethernet It is a LAN media type that functions at the data link layer.
Ethernet uses the Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision
Detection (CSMA/CD) mechanism to send information in a
shared environment. Ethernet was initially developed with
the idea that many devices would be connected to the
same physical piece of wiring.

Dotted Decimal: IPv4 addresses are 32 bits in length. However, to make the
addresses readable, they are broken into 4 bytes (called
octets), with a period (decimal) between each byte. So that
the address is understandable to the human eye, the four
sets of binary numbers are then converted to decimal. The
format of this address is commonly called dotted decimal.

Duplex: Duplexing refers to the method of transmitting and

receiving frames. With a half-duplex configuration, an
interface can either send or receive framesit cant do
both simultaneously. Half-duplex connections are used in
shared environments: hubs.

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP):
DHCP allows devices to acquire their IP addressing
information dynamically. It is built on a client/server model
and defines two components: Server (delivering host
configuration information) and Client (requesting and
acquiring host configuration information).

Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Avoidance Unlike Ethernet, it is impossible to detect collisions in a
(CSMA/CA): wireless medium since a WLAN device cannot
simultaneously send or receive and thus cannot detect a
collision: it can do only one or the other. To avoid collisions,
a WLAN device will use Ready-to-Send (RTS) and Clear-to-
Send (CTS) signals.

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Carrier Sense Multiple
(CSMA/CD):
Access control list (ACL):
Access layer:
Administrative Distance
Application Layer:
Autonomous System (AS):
Blocking state:
Bridge (or switch) ID:
Bridge Protocol Data Unit (BPDU):
Circuit-Switched Connection:
Classful Routing Protocols:
Access/Collision Detection In an Ethernet environment, only one NIC can successfully
send a frame at a time. If two or more machines
simultaneously sense the wire and see no frame, and both
place their frames on the wire, a collision will occur. The
NICs, when they place a frame on the wire, will examine
the status of the wire to ensure that a collision does not
occur: this is the collision detection mechanism of
CSMA/CD.
ACLs, known for their ability to filter traffic as it either
comes into or leaves an interface.
The bottom layer of Ciscos three-layer hierarchical model
is the access layer. The main function of the access layer is
to provide the user an initial connection to your network.
Typically, this connection is provided by a switch.
Administrative distance is a mechanism used to rank the IP
routing protocols. It is used as a tie-breaker if a router is
learning the same route from two different routing
protocols, such as OSPF and EIGRP.
The seventh layer, or topmost layer, of the OSI Reference
Model is the application layer. It provides the interface that
a person uses to interact with the application
An AS is a group of networks under a single administrative
control, which could be your companys network, a division
within your company, or a group of companies networks
When STP is enabled, ports will go into a blocking state to
avoid the looping problem in a switch. During this state, the
only thing the port is doing is listening to and processing
BPDUs on its interfaces.
Each layer 2 device running STP has a unique identifier
assigned to it, which is then used in the BPDUs the layer 2
devices advertise. The bridge ID has two components: the
bridges or switchs priority (2 bytes) and the bridges or
switchs MAC address (6 bytes).
For STP to function, BPDUs are sent out as multicasts every
2 seconds by default, and only other layer 2 devices are
listening to this information. Switches use BPDUs to learn
the topology of the network, including loops.
Circuit-switched connections are dialup connections. These
include analog modem and digital ISDN dialup connections.
A classful routing protocol understands only class subnets.
RIPv1 and IGRP are examples. A classful protocol does not
send subnet mask information in routing updates.
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Classless Inter-domain Routing (CIDR): A CIDR IP address looks like a normal IP address except
that it ends with a slash followed by a number, called the
IP network prefix. CIDR addresses reduce the size of
routing tables and make more IP addresses available
within organizations.

Classless Routing Protocols:
Classless routing protocols do not have any issues accepting
routing updates with any bit value for a subnet mask,
allowing nonconforming subnet masks, such as a default
route. Classless protocols include RIPv2, EIGRP, OSPF, IS-IS,
and BGP.

Core Layer: The core layer, as its name suggests, is the backbone of the
network. It provides a very high-speed connection between
the different distribution layer devices. The traffic that
traverses the core is typically to access enterprise corporate
resources, such as the Internet, gateways, e-mail servers,
and corporate applications.

Cut-Through Switching: With cut-through switching, the switch reads only the very
first part of the frame before making a switching decision.
Once the switch device reads the destination MAC address,
it begins forwarding the frame (even though the frame may
still be coming into the interface).

Data Link Layer: The second layer in the OSI Reference Model is the data
link layer. The data link layer provides for physical, or
hardware, addresses. These hardware addresses are
commonly called Media Access Control (MAC) addresses.
The data link layer also defines how a networking device
accesses the media to which it is connected by defining the
medias frame type.

Default Gateway: If devices on a segment want to reach devices in a different

broadcast domainthat is, a different networkthey must
know to which default gateway to forward their traffic. A
default gateway is basically a router that knows how to get
the local broadcast domains traffic to remote destinations.

Default Route: A default route is a special type of static route. Whereas a

static route specifies a path a router should use to reach a
specific destination, a default route specifies a path the
router should use if it doesnt know how to reach a
destination.

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Denial of Service (DoS) Attack DoS attacks can involve the flooding of millions of packets
or injecting code into an application or overrunning the
buffer(s) of an application, causing it to crash.

Designated Port: With STP, each segment can have only one port on a single
layer 2 device in a forwarding state, called a designated
port. The layer 2 device with the best accumulated path
cost will use its connected port to the segment as the
designated port.

Designated Router (DR): For each network multi-access segment in OSPF, there is a
DR and a backup designated router (BDR) as well as other
routers. When an OSPF router comes up, it forms
adjacencies with the DR and the BDR on each multi-access
segment to which it is connected. An OSPF router talks to a
DR using the IP multicast address of 224.0.0.6. The DR and
the BDR talk to all routers using the 224.0.0.5 multicast IP
address.

Distance Vector Protocols: Distance vector routing protocols use the distance (metric)
and direction (vector) to find paths to destinations. Some
examples of IP routing protocols that are distance vector
include RIPv1 and IGRP.

Distribution Layer: The distribution layer, as opposed to the core and access
layers, performs most of the connectivity tasks. The
responsibilities of the distribution layer include the
following: containing broadcasts, securing traffic, providing
a hierarchy through layer 3 logical addressing and route
summarization, and translating between media types.

Enhanced IGRP (EIGRP): EIGRP was a Cisco-proprietary routing protocol. Its actually
based on IGRP, with many enhancements built into it. Some
of its characteristics include fast convergence, loop-free
topology, VLSM and route summarization, multicast and
incremental updates, and routing for multiple routed
protocols (IP, IPX, and AppleTalk). EIGRP is a hybrid protocol

Exterior Gateway Protocol (EGP): An EGP handles routing between different autonomous
systems. Today, only one EGP is active: the Border Gateway
Protocol (BGP). BGP is used to route traffic across the
Internet backbone between different autonomous systems.

Hybrid routing protocols:
A hybrid protocol takes the advantages of both distance
vector and link state routing protocols and merges them
into a new protocol. Typically, hybrid protocols are based
on a distance vector protocol but contain many of the
features and advantages of link state protocols. Example of
hybrid protocols includes EIGRP.

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Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP):
Internet:
Internet layer:
Internetwork Operating System (IOS):
Network Address Translation (NAT):
Network layer:
Non-Volatile RAM (NVRAM
Open Shortest Path First (OSPF):
Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) Reference Model
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An IGP is a routing protocol that handles routing within a
single autonomous system. IGPs include RIP, IGRP, EIGRP,
OSPF, and IS-IS.
An internet exists where unknown external users can access
internal resources in your network. In other words, your
company might have a web site that sells various products,
and you want any external user to be able to access this
service
The Internet layer is a TCP/IP protocol stack layer and
equates to the network (3) layer of the OSI Reference
Model.
IOS provides a function similar to that of Microsoft
Windows XP, 7 or Linux: it controls and manages the
hardware on which it is running. Basically, the IOS provides
the interface between you and the hardware, allowing you
to execute commands to configure and manage your Cisco
device.
NAT translates one IP address to another, typically private
to public and vice versa.
The third layer of the OSI Reference Model is the network
layer. The network layer provides for a logical topology of
your network using logical, or layer 3, addresses
NVRAM is where the IOSs startup-config file is stored.
NVRAM is a form of persistent RAM: when the device is
turned off, the contents of NVRAM are preserved.
The Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) protocol is a link state
protocol that handles routing for IP traffic. It uses the SPF
algorithm, developed by Dijkstra, to provide a loop-free
topology. It also provides fast convergence with triggered,
incremental updates via link state advertisements (LSAs).
OSPF is a classless protocol and allows for a hierarchical
design with VLSM and route summarization. It uses cost as
a metric.
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO), an
international standards body, developed the Open Systems
Interconnection (OSI) Reference Model to help describe
how information is transferred from one machine to
another: from when a user enters information using a
keyboard and mouse to how it is converted to electrical or
light signals to be transferred across an external medium.
Physical Layer: The first, or bottommost, layer of the OSI Reference
Model is the physical layer. The physical layer is
responsible for the physical mechanics of a network
connection, which includes the following: type of
interface used on the networking device, type of cable
used for connecting devices together and the connectors
used on each end of the cable.

Port Address Translation (PAT): In PAT, inside IP addresses are translated to a single IP
address, where each inside address is given a different port
number for uniqueness.
Presentation Layer: The sixth layer of the OSI Reference Model is the
presentation layer, which is responsible for defining how
information, such as text, graphics, video, and/or audio
information, is presented to the user in the interface being
used.

Routing Information Protocol (RIP): RIP is a routing protocol that is used to connect two or
more different networks. It comes in two versions: Version
1 is a distance vector protocol. Version 2 is a hybrid
protocol. RIPv1 uses local broadcasts to share routing
information. RIPv1 is classful, and RIPv2 is classless
Session Layer: The sixth layer of the OSI Reference Model is the session
layer. The session layer is responsible for initiating the
setup and teardown of connections. In order to perform
these functions, the session layer must determine whether
or not data stays local to a computer or must be obtained
or sent to a remote networking device.

Spanning Tree Protocol (STP): The main function of STP is to remove layer 2 loops from
your topology. DEC originally developed STP; IEEE took the
initial implementation of STP and enhanced it (802.1d).

Split Horizon: Split horizon states that if a neighboring router sends a

route to a router, the receiving router will not propagate
this route back to the advertising router on the same
interface. It is used by distance vector protocols to prevent
routing loops.

Static route A static route is a route that is manually configured on the

router.
Three-way Handshake: With reliable TCP sessions, before a host can send
information to another host, a three-way handshake
process must take place to establish the connection: SYN,
SYN/ACK, and ACK.

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Transmission Control Protocol (TCP TCPs main responsibility is to provide a reliable logical
connection between two devices within TCP/IP. It uses
windowing to implement flow control so that a source
device doesnt overwhelm a destination with too many
segments.

Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP):
TCP/IP is a standard that includes many protocols. It defines
how machines on an internetwork can communicate with
each other. It was initially funded by and developed for
DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). The
Internet uses TCP/IP to carry data between networks, and
most corporations today use TCP/IP for their networks.

Transport layer: The fourth layer of the OSI Reference Model is the
transport layer, which is responsible for the actual
mechanics of a connection. It can provide both reliable and
unreliable delivery of data on a connection.

Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP):
UTP uses a four-pair copper wiring, where each pair is
periodically twisted. It is cheap to install and troubleshoot,
but it is susceptible to electromagnetic interference (EMI)
and radio frequency interference (RFI), and distances of the
cable are limited to a short haul

User Datagram Protocol (UDP): UDP provides an unreliable connection at the transport
layer. UDP doesnt go through a three-way handshake to
set up a connectionit simply begins sending its
information. It doesnt have an acknowledgment process.
Typically, if an acknowledgment process is necessary, the
application layer will provide this verification.

Virtual LAN (VLAN): A VLAN is a group of networking devices in the same

broadcast domain. VLANs are not restricted to any physical
boundary in the switched network, assuming that all the
devices are interconnected via switches and that there are
no intervening layer 3 devices. Logically speaking, VLANs
are also subnets.

VLAN Trunk Protocol (VTP): The VLAN Trunk Protocol (VTP) is a proprietary Cisco
protocol used to share VLAN configuration information
between Cisco switches on trunk connections. VTP allows
switches to share and synchronize their VLAN information,
which ensures that your network has a consistent VLAN
configuration

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