Foundation Topics

A Cisco Catalyst switch uses default settings that allow it to work with no additional configuration, right out of the box. However, most installations configure three major types of switch features: VLANs, as covered in this chapter; Spanning Tree, as covered in Chapter 2; and a variety of administrative settings that do not impact the forwarding behavior of the switch, which are explained in CCENT/CCNA ICND1 640-822 Official Cert Guide.

All published objectives for the ICND1 exam are considered to be prerequisites for the ICND2 exam, although the ICND2 exam does not cover those topics as an end to themselves. For example, as described in the ICND1 book, switches learn MAC addresses by examining the source MAC address of incoming frames, and make forwarding/filtering decisions based on the destination MAC address of the frames. That book’s LAN chapters (Chapter 3 plus Chapters 7 through 11) also explain the concepts of autonegotiation, collisions, collision domains, and broadcast domains. So, while the ICND2 exam might not have a specific question on these topics, these topics might be required to answer a question related to the exam objectives for the ICND2 exam. And, of course, the CCNA exam covers all the topics and objectives for both the ICND1 and ICND2 exams.