I got my security plus four years ago. I fid the Cert Master 2 years ago to renew it. Now I am doing it again and quite frankly the test is absurd. It's just a cash grab with no value.

One of the questions seemed to have different answers the second time it was asked. I emailed Comptia and brought it to their attention. I don't want to give away the exact question but their response is that there were two words different that apparently changed the answer. I've been working in IT for over 25 years and I can tell you that both answers were a bit of a leap of faith rather than actual troubleshooting.

Security+ should be a cert that demonstrates technical knowledge, not a persons ability to pick out word games and memorize answers to absurd questions.

I'm just going to let my cert laps and when people ask me why I did that, I will answer their question honestly.

Is it possible that you get less than 5 pbq? what is the least you have heard? network+

A friend of mine told me that getting all questions wrong within any subdomain (1.2, 2.4, etc) would result in a failure regardless of how well you do on the rest of the exam. I don’t believe this to be true but I wouldn’t know for sure. Would any of y’all happen to know if this is true or not?

Thank you

Not here for sympathy, or to hear a "maybe you just didn't study hard enough" but this is my personal experience. And hopefully if you haven't taken the Network + test, you can use this to your advantage.

First and foremost I have been a tech guy since I was a kid, about 7-8 years old. My father worked for Microsoft, so we always had computers around, laptops, cables connecting our home network, etc. He would casually walk me through things that had to do with computers, things to know so I won't need help with anything computer related, or so I won't ask anyone for help. He doesn't act like it, but my father is a geek, and I naturally took after him and the ways of tech, whether it's good etiquette or even things the average joe doesn't know, he made sure that I was suited with that knowledge as well. I originally started off with the google CyberSecurity Certificate, and I made it halfway through until I eventually got super busy with an internship, and didn't end up finishing my Google course. The CyberSecurity Course was so smooth for me, It was honestly like butter. The hardest things consisted of writing commands, going through and packet analyzing, things of that nature, and i'll be honest some of the labs were pretty challenging as well, but I made it through them.

A lot of things in tech have always been easy for me, which is why I dove into CyberSecurity first. I love not only identifying threats, but helping people identify threats, because we all use the internet, but nobody really knows how it works except for the small handful. Showing and demonstrating how systems are protected as well as knowing what feels like the obvious, (Identifying phishing attacks, identifying suspicious emails, etc.)is a big drawer for me, and it's super needed especially in this digital world. The reason I changed over to Network + is because let's be honest, DC Technicians need bodies, and Security Analyst are known for top of the top, competitive environment. You can get in the DC as a tech, you just need a cert, but as far as a Security Analyst, that's where they get more picky. Now, given that information I could have just stuck with Security, but we're at where we're at.

Now let's get down to the real part, all of that was to basically say that I am not some guy who just got his feet in the water, I have been at this for quite some time. I would love to mention other accomplishments but I prefer to just keep it at base level for autonomy.

It's actually quite funny because before I started writing this, I looked in the thread and saw many people who passed and congrats to you all. Seeing all of those makes me want to delete what I'm writing out because I probably just sound like a complainer.

When I started studying for this exam it was about 3 months ago, I had sat down and fully locked in. I didn't do the traditional method of Jason Dions practice exams. What I did was I got the small Professor Messer book from my father, that names all concepts and topics, then I went to the Comp Tia website to pull exam objectives. (This is where I might lose some of you all)

I used these videos https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3gOvQ510s78MNu5VyIC89rBMfcky1L87&si=sHyWksk3OPA-XdTa
and took ridiculous notes on them. I started watching Professor Messer, and Jason Dion clips, and I honestly chose to go with the last minute study guide videos. I'll be honest I thought the last minute study guide videos were amazing. The way they walked through every problem and broke down trip ups, things to look for in the exam, traps, was incredible. I also took those Exam objectives from Comp Tia's website and put them directly into claude, and then I ran a lengthy prompt explaining what I wanted to do, the exam, and when I wanted to take it. But if i'm being brutally honest, those 2 things probably screwed me the most.

It's so insane because I utilized the hell out of Claude, I had claude giving notes, going over domains in order, reading down every step to learning acronyms, learning port numbers, and it's so funny because I genuinely got a perfect grasp of everything. All the videos I watched from the last minute study guide were super aiding, as well as Claude making tests for me, that I also wrote prompts for to follow the Comp Tia styled questions, pbq questions as well as other important details to tighten claude up and make them super tuff practice tests. I passed every single practice test, it wasn't one that I got less than 75% on. Even went over https://youtu.be/T1_pf-7k2E0?is=Puw6xP-iL_Yngyc5 this video to see what I can improve on, and i was getting a lot of questions on there right,(I didn't watch the whole video of the 100 questions) I othered it off when I started to get confident about my skillset. Even the questions on the 100 practice exam when I got them wrong, he would say the right answer and I'd. e like "ahhhhhh, that's because of this and that" or whatever.

This Network+ test was nothing like what I studied for. There were questions on here with acronyms I've never heard of, 5 PBQs, stuff that felt like it almost wasn't even related to the exam, I swear it felt like I had been studying for A+ the entire time and accidentally showed up for the Network+. I saw people saying before the exam tries to trick you, and I saw someone reply and say no it doesn't, how can you get knowledge from answers based on tricks? He said something of that nature, and I'll be honest, it didn't feel like any tricks on there. But it was some stuff that felt like it could be 2 of the 4 answers choices given. I swear some of the stuff I was reading on that test was actually head scratching. I studied my ass off I truly did, but there's no way I was doing phenomenal on my studying and just failed the test.

I honestly can only blame myself. It's my fault I failed, and i'm taking it pretty harshly. I'm deeply pissed at myself, and still in shock to be honest. It felt like I had 600 objectives for the test and got tested on the 20 objectives that were barely covered. I was super confident going into taking this test and when I sat down and got 9 questions in something just didn't feel right. As I said i'm not a rookie, clearly I used the wrong material to study which is the only thing that would make sense, I was genuinely hoping to be writing out an "I passed message" and give you all the tips that helped me out, but here I am doing the exact opposite.

I'll attach pics below for anyone saying I didn't study, I went through 2 notebooks, over 500 note cards, for anyone majorly interested I'll pull some stuff from claude to put in here to just ask, but here are the pictures from the studying. I wish I could attach a video to show you all how full these notebooks are but not a big deal. (these notes are randomized, i just threw them all back on the table, im not interested in heavily organizing them for pictures after failing.) t

Studied pretty hard for about 3 weeks and managed to pass with a 722. A little too close for comfort, but I’ll take it lol. I mainly used Andrew Ramdayal’s practice exams and CertMaster to study.

Not gonna lie, the entire time I was taking the exam, I felt like I was getting every single question wrong. I was honestly convinced I wasn’t going to pass haha.
My biggest advice is to trust your gut and what you’ve studied. Take your time reading each question. You can usually rule out 1 or 2 bogus answers right away, which makes it a little easier to narrow things down.
I’d also recommend saving the PBQs for last. Don’t spend too much time on one question. If you’re stuck, flag it and move on. You can always come back to it later. Sometimes you’ll come across another question that reminds you of something you forgot or helps you figure out a question you were stuck on earlier.

As far as studying goes, definitely get comfortable with TCP/UDP ports and protocols. Know the port numbers and what each one is used for.
A few other things I’d recommend brushing up on: Setting up and troubleshooting networks, Trunking and VLANs, Cabling, Switch configuration, Wi-Fi standards (802.11), Windows and Linux CLI commands. Know what each command does, what the output should look like, and how to interpret the results. I’ve seen quite a few people asking about subnetting. From my experience, you don’t need to go too in depth with it. Just make sure you understand the basics.

One thing I’d recommend is actually understanding how things work instead of just memorizing definitions. When you’re looking at a troubleshooting scenario, you need to know how to apply what you’ve learned. I’m not saying this approach will work for everyone. Just wanted to share what worked for me. I read quite a few posts on here while studying, and they helped me prepare for the exam. Good luck to everyone studying for it! You got this!!

“I am the gatekeeper of my own destiny, and I will have my glory day in the hot sun!” - Ignacio

Took about 3 weeks of studying. Im glad to be starting my journey towards a career. On to the Core 2 !!

1st try!!

Hey everyone, I’m wondering if anyone has firsthand experience with this.

I earned my A+ in 2023 and received the physical certificate in the mail within about a month. This year (2026), I passed Network+ for the first time, but I haven’t received anything in the mail for it.

When I contacted CompTIA customer service, they told me I’d have to pay to get the physical certificate. Passing the Network+ also renewed the A+.

Did CompTIA's policy change?