Cisco CCDA Certification

CCDA, short for Cisco Certified Design Associate, is an associate level certification. As the name implies, it is widely taken by network engineers involved in design and implementation of computer networks focused primarily on Cisco equipment.




You may find the official page on CCDA here:
https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/community/certifications/ccda

The exam code for CCDA is 200-310. The exam objectives (topics) that are covered by the certification are as given below:

1.0 Design Methodologies	15%
1.1 Describe the Cisco Design lifecycle – PBM (plan, build, manage) 1.2 Describe the information required to characterize an existing network as part of the planning for a design change 1.3 Describe the use cases and benefits of network characterization tools (SNMP, NBAR, NetFlow) 1.4 Compare and contrast the top-down and bottom-up design approaches
2.0 Design Objectives	20%
2.1 Describe the importance and application of modularity in a network 2.2 Describe the importance and application of hierarchy in a network 2.3 Describe the importance and application of scalability in a network 2.4 Describe the importance and application of resiliency in a network 2.5 Describe the importance and application of concept of fault domains in a network
3.0 Addressing and Routing Protocols in an Existing Network	20%
3.1 Describe the concept of scalable addressing 3.1.a Hierarchy 3.1.b Summarization 3.1.c Efficiency 3.2 Design an effective IP addressing scheme 3.2.a Subnetting 3.2.b Summarization 3.2.c Scalability 3.2.d NAT 3.3 Identify routing protocol scalability considerations 3.3.a Number of peers 3.3.b Convergence requirements 3.3.c Summarization boundaries and techniques 3.3.d Number of routing entries 3.3.e Impact of routing table of performance 3.3.f Size of the flooding domain 3.3.g Topology 3.4 Design a routing protocol expansion 3.4.a IGP protocols (EIGRP, OSPF, ISIS) 3.4.b BGP (eBGP peering, iBGP peering
4.0 Enterprise Network Design	20%
4.1 Design a basic campus 4.1.a Layer 2/Layer 3 demarcation 4.1.b Spanning tree 4.1.c Ether channels 4.1.d First Hop Redundancy Protocols (FHRP) 4.1.e Chassis virtualization 4.2 Design a basic enterprise network 4.2.a Layer 3 protocols and redistribution 4.2.b WAN connectivity 4.2.b(i) Topologies (hub and spoke, spoke to spoke, point to point, full/partial mesh) 4.2.b(ii) Connectivity methods (DMVPN, get VPN, MPLS Layer 3 VPN, Layer 2 VPN, static IPsec, GRE,VTI) 4.2.b(iii) Resiliency (SLAs, backup links, QoS) 4.2.c Connections to the data center 4.2.d Edge connectivity 4.2.d(i) Internet connectivity 4.2.d(ii) ACLs and firewall placements 4.2.d(iii) NAT placement 4.3 Design a basic branch network 4.3.a Redundancy 4.3.a(i) Connectivity 4.3.a(ii) Hardware 4.3.a(iii) Service provider 4.3.b Link capacity 4.3.b(i) Bandwidth 4.3.b(ii) Delay
5.0 Considerations for Expanding an Existing Network	25%
5.1 Describe design considerations for wireless network architectures 5.1.a Physical and virtual controllers 5.1.b Centralized and decentralized designs 5.2 Identify integration considerations and requirements for controller-based wireless networks 5.2.a Traffic flows 5.2.b Bandwidth consumption 5.2.c AP and controller connectivity 5.2.d QoS 5.3 Describe security controls integration considerations 5.3.a Traffic filtering and inspection 5.3.b Firewall and IPS placement and functionality 5.4 Identify traffic flow implications as a result of security controls 5.4.a Client access methods 5.4.b Network access control 5.5 Identify high-level considerations for collaboration (voice, streaming video, interactive video) applications 5.5.a QoS (shaping vs. policing, trust boundaries, jitter, delay, loss) 5.5.b Capacity 5.5.c Convergence time 5.5.d Service placement 5.6 Describe the concepts of virtualization within a network design 5.7 Identify network elements that can be virtualized 5.7.a Physical elements (chassis, VSS, VDC, contexts) 5.7.b Logical elements (routing elements, tunneling, VRFs, VLANs) 5.8 Describe the concepts of network programmability within a network design 5.8.a APIs 5.8.b Controllers 5.8.c Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) 5.9 Describe data center components 5.9.a Server load balancing basics 5.9.b Blocking vs. non-blocking Layer 2 5.9.c Layer 2 extension Note that the exam topics get revised from time to time, and please visit Cisco website for most up to date topics. You may find downloadable practice tests for CCDA here: CCDA Practice Tests download page Note that CCDA will require prerequisites of CCENT, CCNA Routing and Switching, or CCIE/CCDE Certification.