Since Jun 24 2026, i started studying for the Network+ certificate exam to improve and gain my overall knowledge regarding computer networks. I decided to, for the sake of sharing my timeline and content of study, share my study notes in text files written in Vim over here on my GitHub page.
I personally really didn't follow a specific study guide besides studying atleast one page every day of the week besides on Fridays. I also tend to see a lot of students lean towards learning curves when it comes to studying networks - the best way to learn networking is to see real-life scenarios of use cases in the network world or to use hands-on experience in scenarios such as modem, router or switch configurations. Of course, you need to have the proper network equipment such as switches, modems or routers, so i decided to host my own network via linking two Alpine Linux virtual machines on my own system to see how networks work software-wise. I did this starting from chapter 6, where the book starts to get a little more hands-on. If you can't or don't want to spend money on network infrastructure (I highly recommend you do, because networking is brilliant when done hands-on), try my method.
This is entirely up to you. Another thing to note is that for a big majority of the time you spend taking courses, you might not really find hands-on applications much often. This has nothing to do with you or the course - the Network+ exam does not expect you to be able to physically alter a switch, install wall outlets on a company building or even crimp an 8P8C connector. These are all things you will have to learn yourself, and research about on your own.
The notes are written as plain text files in Vim, and I recommend you clone this repository and open its content via Vim. Otherwise, it's also possilbe to view the contents of files simply by clicking on them here on the webpage - but if your Vim environment is configured to support reading text files and you're someone who prefers offline backups, definitely read them locally.
NOTE: These notes are NOT intended to teach you concepts regarding the objectives of the Network+ exam. If you wish to learn the objectives of the exam and excel at them, I suggest self-studying the CompTIA Network+ Exam Guide by Mike Meyers. He is an amazing tutor, network infrastructure maintainer and engineer, and most importantly, one of the best teachers I have had the honor to read the works of.
A. Mike Meyers: CompTIA Network+ Exam Guide
I mainly used a PDF version of the CompTIA Network+ Exam Guide (book cover shown at the top of the readme) myself across this entire study. The book itself contains about 1200 pages give or take, and the material is dense; however, the author of the book tends to follow a very crucial pattern of teaching that takes you from the early concepts of networking such as ancient topologies, wiring standards and cabling standards and is definitely very broad over the TCP/IP protocol suite sections, where chapter 6, TCP/IP Protocol Suite extends to somewhere between 80 pages. The TotalSeminars Website offers a hands-on set of tests and quizes which you can take. Some of these tests are free, while some of them require additional purchases. If you pay for the book, you will definitely get these tests for free.
(Note that only the sections marked as 'free' are freely usable. To use the other tests, you'll need to pay for the book to get the tests for free on the side, or may be required to pay an entirely additional sum.)
B. Professor Messer
known as Professor Messer on YouTube, he hosts one of the most widely known and popularized, free courses for Network+. I didn't take his course myself, but for some parts of the concepts I could not really understand well from the book, his videos offered visual guides and perfectly linear and understandable explanations. You can find the latest version of the course here.
C. PowerCert Animated Videos
While the YouTube channel may offer long videos of courses about the objectives of the exam, you can easily find perfectly drawn and animated visual diagrams of concepts you might not understand easily from this channel, without having to look up through timestamps on long, four hour videos. Stuff like routing tables, cable run layouts or how patch panels work are flawlessly drawn, animated and explained on this channel, entirely for free. If you ever feel stuck on something and look it up on YouTube, chances are you may see videos from this channel.
D. Using other paid courses
There's nothing wrong with paying to learn something you may not understand on your own; in fact, you will support someone else financially for teaching you valuable things. However, the big problem with this is that some teachers with unknown or shallow teaching experience (note teaching experience, not technical knowledge) may not offer you a very in-depth material compared to Messer or Meyers. Meyers himself has been in the industry for decades - his teaching methods are flawless, and he doesn't miss a point in his content. Newer models of teaching for the exam might also consider usage of the Cisco Packet Tracer program; a program designed to "help you understand the Network+ exam objectives more thoroughly". Anybody who uses any Linux-based operating system faces issues regarding using the proprietary app on their own OS natively. It was such a hassle that at some point, I felt like I can't even study without the Packet Tracer program and completely ditched a paid Udemy course. Use of the Packet Tracer program is a really big win if you can take advantage of it, but I couldn't.
This is a list of paid courses over here at Udemy. They're totally fine and might even be perfect learning material, but some of us simply cannot afford to even purchase these courses, even if we had the money - scenarios such as living in third-world countries which block use of banking software such as PayPal is a big headache.
If I were to recommend you to take a move for the best outcome and least money spent, I'd suggest you did the following: get a copy of the Network+ Exam Guide from Mike Meyers for free from free document websites or borrow a copy digitally from archive.org. If you're on Windows, simply install a virtual machine manager and install two small virtual machines on your own system. If you're on Linux, just install a virtual machine manager in which you'll install two slim Linux-based operating systems and get to reading the book. You can easily get over at least 4 chapters within less than a month, even if you don't prioritize the book as your main hobby or objective. If you do prioritize it, don't even worry yourself with the thousand pages; you'll run them out in no time. Can you finish the entire book in a month? I have no idea. I can't study for more than 3-4 hours every day if I absolutely prioritize a study, but different people study differently. If you can study the content, not take notes the whole time like I did and perfectly (or atleast perfectly) recall the content you studied after 48 hours, you might finish it in a month - but don't rush it, even if you're in a hurry.
Here's my lab:
I didn't want to make it too confusing so I just installed two Alpine Linux virtual machines, configured SSH on each of them and locally ssh'd to each VM to avoid the hassle of ugly VM manager screens and dull black and white TTYs. You won't even need to dedicate a full gigabyte of RAM to these Alpine machines - it's more than enough to get them running. You can find a tremendous amount of knowledge regarding virtual machines on YouTube for free - I used this blog to set up Qemu and KVM: Dave Eddy's KVM Virtualization with virt-manager on Void Linux blog
On other operating systems, it's much easier to configure virtual machine managers - it's just a matter of how you want your virtual machine to shine. There are even courses regarding virtualization which teach you how to host VPSs and run your own cloud infrastructure as you keep going deep into the networking rabbithole.