What is it?

What exactly is the CompTIA Network+?

Prove you can build and troubleshoot networks

CompTIA Network+ validates the skills needed to design, configure, manage and troubleshoot wired and wireless networks. It is vendor-neutral and assumes about nine months of networking experience.

Before you book

Who is eligible to sit the CompTIA Network+?

Who it is for: Junior network administrators and support staff

The test itself

What is the format of the CompTIA Network+?

The CompTIA Network+ is administered by Pearson VUE and runs 90 minutes, contains 90 questions and requires 720 of 900 to pass.

Money & time

How much does the CompTIA Network+ cost?

For the CompTIA Network+, the exam fee is $369; the all-in cost is typically $369+; most candidates spend 2–3 months preparing.

The fine print

What are the retake and renewal rules for the CompTIA Network+?

Proctoring & delivery

Delivered by Pearson VUE with two options: an in-person proctored test center, or online proctoring via OnVUE with a live remote proctor (requires webcam, stable internet, and a private room).

Retake policy

If you do not pass, you may retake XK0-006 after a 14-day waiting period. Each attempt requires a new exam voucher; there is no limit on the number of retakes. CompTIA's standard candidate agreement governs retake rules.

Score reporting

A pass/fail result is shown on screen immediately after the exam. A detailed score report by domain is available in your Pearson VUE account and mirrored in your CompTIA CertCentral record.

Recertification

Linux+ is valid for 3 years from the certification date. Renew by earning 50 Continuing Education (CE) credits and paying the CE fee through CompTIA CertCentral, by earning a higher-level CompTIA certification, or by passing the current XK0-006 exam again.

Refunds & rescheduling

Exam vouchers are generally non-refundable but may be transferable or have a defined expiry; optional CertMaster training may be refundable within a limited window per CompTIA's terms. Review voucher terms at purchase.

What it pays

How much does this credential pay?

$96,800 median for network and computer systems administrators, SOC 15-1244 (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, May 2024)

The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not publish an occupation called "Network+ holder", and it does not track wages by certificate at all — it classifies workers by the duties they actually perform. That matters here more than it does for most credentials, because Network+ sits deliberately between two very different BLS occupations and your salary depends entirely on which side of the line your job description lands. The occupation we use as the anchor is Network and Computer Systems Administrators, SOC 15-1244, which had a median annual wage of $96,800 in May 2024 — $46.54 an hour — with the lowest 10 percent under $60,320 and the highest 10 percent above $150,320. That is the role CompTIA itself points Network+ at: the certification page names network operations specialist and system administrator among its mapped NICE and DoD 8140 work roles and recommends nine to twelve months of hands-on experience in a junior network administrator or network support technician job before you sit. Below that occupation sits the realistic first landing spot for most new Network+ holders. Computer Network Support Specialists, SOC 15-1231, had a May 2024 median of $73,340, with the lowest 10 percent under $46,010; Computer User Support Specialists, SOC 15-1232, sat at $60,340. Above it sits the destination: Computer Network Architects, SOC 15-1241, at a $130,390 median, though BLS notes that occupation typically expects five or more years of prior experience, so it is a five-year target rather than a next step. Read the trajectory rather than any single number. Network+ on its own moves you from the support tier into the administration tier; what moves you through the administration tier is automation, cloud networking and security, which is also where the occupational growth is.

Job growth.-4% projected change 2024-34 for network and computer systems administrators (a decline of 13,800 jobs) with about 14,300 openings a year, all from replacement need; by contrast BLS projects +12% for computer network architects with about 11,200 openings a year

Source: BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook — Network and Computer Systems Administrators (15-1244)

Your schedule

How long should I study for it?

90-120 hours of focused study

Confirm the exam code before you buy anything. The current exam is N10-009, the V9 release, which launched on 20 June 2024; CompTIA states that its exams usually retire about three years after launch and gives an estimated 2027 retirement for this one. N10-008 material is still on sale and still ranks in search results, and it is written to a different set of domain names and weightings. The N10-009 blueprint has five domains: Networking Concepts 23 percent, Network Implementation 20 percent, Network Operations 19 percent, Network Security 14 percent, and Network Troubleshooting 24 percent. Read those weights carefully, because they are not what most candidates assume. Troubleshooting is the single largest domain on the paper and Security is the smallest — the opposite of the emphasis in a lot of older prep material. Troubleshooting is also not separate content; it is the other four domains presented as symptoms, which is why it sits at the end of this plan rather than the middle. CompTIA recommends A+ plus nine to twelve months of hands-on experience in a junior network administrator or network support role, and the plan below assumes something close to that. If you have none, add three weeks at the front for basic PC and OS networking. Eight weeks at 11 to 14 hours a week is a realistic schedule for someone working full time. Two things get their own block deliberately: subnetting, which is the highest-value single skill on the exam and cannot be crammed, and performance-based question rehearsal, because PBQs are where the 90-minute clock disappears.

1. Week 111-13 hrs

   Orientation, lab build and the OSI model

   • Download the official N10-009 objectives PDF from CompTIA and print it — it is the syllabus and the revision checklist
   • Install Cisco Packet Tracer or GNS3 and build a two-switch, one-router topology you can break and rebuild
   • The seven OSI layers cold, in both directions, with a device and a protocol attached to each layer
   • Encapsulation and de-encapsulation: what a frame, a packet and a segment each carry, and which layer adds what
2. Week 212-14 hrs

   Domain 1 — Networking Concepts, part one (23%)

   • Networking appliances: routers, switches, firewalls, IDS/IPS, load balancers, proxies, NAS and SAN — what each does and at which layer
   • Ports and protocols to recall on sight: FTP 20/21, SFTP and SSH 22, Telnet 23, SMTP 25, DNS 53, DHCP 67/68, HTTP 80, HTTPS 443, SNMP 161/162, LDAP 389, LDAPS 636, RDP 3389, SIP 5060/5061
   • Transmission media and connectors: single-mode versus multimode fibre, SC/LC/ST/MPO, RJ11 and RJ45, coaxial and DAC
   • Topologies — star, mesh, hybrid, point-to-point, three-tier, collapsed core and spine-and-leaf — and where each is actually used
3. Week 312-14 hrs

   IPv4 addressing and subnetting until it is automatic

   • Classes A-E, RFC1918 private ranges, APIPA, loopback, and public versus private addressing
   • CIDR and VLSM: convert between prefix length, subnet mask, network address, broadcast address and usable host count without a calculator
   • Twenty subnetting problems a day, timed, for the whole week — target under 30 seconds each
   • Cloud concepts in the same domain: NFV, VPC, network security groups, cloud gateways, and the public/private/hybrid and IaaS/PaaS/SaaS models
4. Week 412-14 hrs

   Domain 2 — Network Implementation (20%)

   • Routing: static versus dynamic, the difference between OSPF, EIGRP and BGP, route selection, NAT and PAT, FHRP and VIPs
   • Switching: VLAN creation and assignment, trunking, spanning tree behaviour, MTU and jumbo frames
   • Wireless: 2.4 versus 5 versus 6 GHz, non-overlapping channels, SSID and guest networks, WPA2/WPA3 and enterprise authentication, antenna types and AP placement
   • Configure all of the above in Packet Tracer rather than reading about it
5. Week 511-13 hrs

   Domain 3 — Network Operations (19%)

   • Documentation: physical versus logical diagrams, rack and cable maps, IPAM, asset inventory, SLAs and wireless surveys
   • Life-cycle and change management: EOL versus EOS, decommissioning, and the change-request process CompTIA expects you to describe
   • Monitoring: SNMP, flow data, packet capture, port mirroring, log aggregation and what a baseline is for
   • Disaster recovery arithmetic: RPO, RTO, MTTR, MTBF, cold/warm/hot sites, active-active versus active-passive
6. Week 611-13 hrs

   Domain 4 — Network Security (14%)

   • Authentication and access: RADIUS, TACACS+, LDAP, SAML, SSO, MFA, least privilege, role-based access control and geofencing
   • Attacks you must recognise from a description: DoS/DDoS, VLAN hopping, MAC flooding, ARP poisoning, DNS poisoning, rogue DHCP, evil twin, on-path, and the social-engineering set
   • Defences: device hardening, NAC, ACLs, content filtering, screened subnets, trusted versus untrusted zones, honeypots and honeynets
   • Segmentation for IoT, IIoT, SCADA, ICS, OT, guest and BYOD — the exam asks about these by name
7. Week 712-14 hrs

   Domain 5 — Network Troubleshooting (24%)

   • Memorise CompTIA’s troubleshooting methodology in order and be able to name the step from a description of the action
   • Cabling and physical layer: wrong cable type, signal degradation, improper termination, TX/RX transposed, PoE budget, transceiver mismatch, interface counters
   • Service-layer faults: STP issues, wrong VLAN assignment, ACL blocks, missing default route, DHCP pool exhaustion, wrong gateway or mask
   • Tools: what ping, traceroute, ipconfig/ifconfig, nslookup/dig, netstat, arp, a cable tester, a Wi-Fi analyser and a protocol analyser each prove — and what they do not
8. Week 812-14 hrs

   Performance-based question rehearsal and timed full exams

   • Practise the PBQ formats: drag-and-drop matching, configuring a device interface, reading command output, and placing devices in a topology
   • Three full 90-minute timed exams weighted to the five N10-009 domains
   • Re-lab every miss in Packet Tracer instead of re-reading the explanation
   • Final passes over subnetting, the port list and the troubleshooting methodology — the three cheapest sources of marks — then one quiet day

What to buy

Which study resources are worth paying for?

The Network+ market is unusually well served at the free end, which changes the calculus. A complete, current video course exists at no cost, the best lab software is free, and subnetting drills are free, so the money you spend should go to two things only: the voucher, and a question bank good enough to tell you honestly whether you are ready. Everything else is optional. The one decision worth real thought is whether to buy a voucher with Retake Assurance, which costs roughly a hundred dollars more than a bare voucher and covers one eligible retake — worth it if your practice scores are still moving, poor value if they have been stable for two weeks. CompTIA’s own CertMaster line is comprehensive and priced accordingly; its value is highest for candidates with no lab, no employer training budget and no self-study discipline, and lowest for anyone who will actually build the Packet Tracer topologies. CompTIA publishes estimated study durations for those products — 30 to 60 hours for CertMaster Perform, 25 to 40 for Learn, 15 to 25 for Labs and 10 to 20 for Practice — which is a useful sanity check against the 90 to 120 hours this plan assumes overall. Two warnings about pricing. First, CompTIA voucher prices move: US list pricing was reported at $399 following a 2026 revision, and authorised resellers regularly list the same voucher lower, so the spread between the worst and best price you can pay is meaningful. Second, prices below were checked at review time and CompTIA’s own store was not reachable for direct verification on the day, so treat every figure here as a starting point and confirm at the source before you pay.

Prices checked 2026-08 in USD before tax. CompTIA’s own pricing page returned an access block at the time of review, so voucher figures are drawn from current reseller listings and reported US list pricing — confirm at the CompTIA store for your testing country before buying. Udemy list prices are close to meaningless outside a sale. We do not rank by commission and take no affiliate payment for placement.

What you'll face

What question types will I see?

N10-009 is a maximum of 90 questions in 90 minutes, delivered in English, German, Japanese, Portuguese or Spanish, scored on a 100-900 scale with a 720 cut. The paper mixes multiple-choice items — single answer and multiple response — with performance-based questions that put you in a simulated interface or in front of configuration output and ask you to complete a task. PBQs are presented early and carry more weight than an individual multiple-choice item, but you may skip them and return, which makes the presented order irrelevant to how you should actually work. Because CompTIA equates forms statistically, your scaled score is not a percentage of items answered correctly and cannot be converted into one; a practice-test target of "80 percent" is a heuristic that does not map onto the scoring model. The five domains are Networking Concepts 23%, Network Implementation 20%, Network Operations 19%, Network Security 14% and Network Troubleshooting 24%. The pacing arithmetic follows from that: if PBQs can take four to six minutes each, the multiple-choice items have to average well under a minute for the time to exist. Distractors on this exam are almost always real protocols, real ports or real technologies that do something adjacent to the right answer — partial familiarity is punished specifically, and guessing between two plausible protocols is how a borderline candidate ends up on the wrong side of 720.

Samples are editor-written illustrations of the published blueprint, not live exam items.

Reference

What are the key facts about the CompTIA Network+?

CompTIA Network+ is a certification credential; awarded by CompTIA; the exam fee is $369; typical preparation is 2–3 months; holders typically earn $50,000 – $75,000.

In short

Is the CompTIA Network+ worth it?

• Network+ is a single vendor-neutral networking exam.
• It covers concepts, implementation, operations, security and troubleshooting.
• It is a common bridge from A+ toward CCNA.

Worth comparing

How does the CompTIA Network+ compare with similar credentials?

• CompTIA A+ Certification CompTIA
• CompTIA Security+ CompTIA
• Cisco Certified Network Associate Cisco Systems

Trust

Where does this information come from?

Everything above is taken from the awarding body's own published material. Fees, question counts and domain weights are revised regularly — check the official page before you pay.

• CompTIA Awarding body
• Official CompTIA Network+ exam page Exam page
• CompTIA certification programme Programme rules

Research confidence: high · Last reviewed 2026-08