Network+ N10-009 Exam Guide: Objectives, Cost, Difficulty, Study Plan

Network+ sits between A+ and Security+ on the CompTIA path. It's vendor neutral. That means you learn how networks work everywhere, not how one vendor's gear works. It's also on the DoD 8140 list for technical support, network operations, and system administrator work roles.

What's on the Network+ N10-009 exam?

Five domains. CompTIA weights them like this:

Troubleshooting and Networking Concepts make up 47% of the exam between them. That's almost half. Build your study time around those two.

Troubleshooting is also where the exam stops being about recall. You'll be given a symptom and asked what's wrong. Wrong VLAN. Bad gateway. Exhausted DHCP pool. Transposed TX/RX. You can't memorize your way through that. You have to have seen it.

Exam details

A note on retirement. CompTIA says exams usually retire about three years after launch and estimates 2027 for N10-009. No firm date yet. If you start studying now, you'll test well before then.

How much does Network+ cost?

Two costs. The exam voucher and your training.

Exam voucher. CompTIA sets the price and sells vouchers in its store, alone or bundled with CertMaster training and a retake. Check the price the week you buy. It changes.

Training. This is where your choices spread out. ACI Learning's CompTIA Network+ Certification Bundle is $249 a year. It includes the N10-009 course plus both A+ courses, Skill Labs, and practice exams. Want the whole library instead? ITPro Premium covers Network+ and every other course, with labs and practice exams.

Budget for a retake, too. Not because you'll need it. Because planning for it takes the pressure off exam day.

How hard is Network+?

Harder than A+. Easier than CCNA. That's the honest short answer.

CompTIA calls it an intermediate exam and recommends 9–12 months of hands-on experience first. You don't strictly need that. Plenty of people pass without it. But the people who struggle usually share two gaps:

1. Subnetting. It shows up in Networking Concepts and again in Troubleshooting. If you can't carve a /26 out of a /24 quickly, you'll burn time you don't have.
2. Performance-based questions. PBQs put you in a simulated scenario. Configure this. Find the fault in this diagram. They reward people who've actually touched a switch config or read a packet capture.

Both are fixable. Daily subnetting drills fix the first. Lab time fixes the second.

The 8-week Network+ study plan

This plan assumes 8–10 hours a week and A+-level knowledge going in. Brand new to IT? Add 2–3 weeks up front for fundamentals. Already working a help desk or NOC job? You can probably compress it.

Weeks 1–2: Networking Concepts (23%) Start with the OSI model and don't skip it. Every later domain refers back to it. Then ports and protocols, appliances, topologies, and cloud concepts. Start subnetting on day one. Ten minutes a day. Every day. Through week 8.

Week 3: Network Implementation (20%) Routing and switching. Static vs. dynamic routing. What OSPF, EIGRP, and BGP are for. VLANs, trunking, spanning tree. Wireless channels, bands, and security. Get into a lab this week. Build a VLAN. Break it. Fix it.

Week 4: Network Operations (19%) The "running a network" domain. Documentation. Change management. Monitoring with SNMP, flow data, and packet capture. Disaster recovery terms: RPO, RTO, MTTR, MTBF. This is lighter on math and heavier on vocabulary. Flashcards help here.

Week 5: Network Security (14%) The smallest domain, but don't coast. Know your attacks: VLAN hopping, ARP poisoning, evil twin, on-path. Know your defenses: NAC, ACLs, segmentation, hardening. If Security+ is your next step, this domain is your head start.

Weeks 6–7: Network Troubleshooting (24%) The biggest domain gets two weeks. Learn CompTIA's troubleshooting methodology in order. It gets tested directly. Then work symptoms to causes: cabling, interface counters, routing table problems, wrong subnet mask, address exhaustion, latency and packet loss. Do this in labs, not just in notes.

Week 8: Practice exams and review Take at least two full-length, timed practice exams. Review every miss by domain. Missing troubleshooting questions? That's a signal to go back. Confirm your test date and proctoring setup. Make sure your voucher is for N10-009.

How do I know I'm ready?

Consistent scores of 80% or better on full-length practice exams is a reasonable bar. Not one good run. Several. And watch your troubleshooting score separately. It's a quarter of the exam.

More on why practice exams beat re-reading notes: how practice exams help you pass IT certifications faster.

What comes after Network+?

Two common paths. Security+ if you're heading toward cybersecurity. Network+ covers a lot of the networking that Security+ assumes you already know. Or CCNA if you want to go deeper on routing and switching, especially in Cisco shops. Not sure which fits? Read CCNA vs Network+: which should you take first.

Get hands-on before exam day

Reading gets you through Networking Concepts. Labs get you through Troubleshooting. ACI Learning's CompTIA Network+ Certification Bundle pairs the N10-009 course (117 episodes, about 34 hours) with Skill Labs and practice exams, so you can build, break, and fix networks before the PBQs ask you to. $249 a year.

Still mapping your path? Compare the A+, Network+, and Security+ certification paths to see where Network+ fits, or browse every CompTIA certification bundle. Want the whole ACI ITPro library instead? Compare ITPro plans.