220-1201 Practice Test 4 — 25 Questions

Question 1

A customer complains that their web browser cannot load any HTTPS websites, but HTTP sites work fine. The firewall is configured to allow common ports. Which port is most likely being blocked?

Accepted Answer

443. HTTPS uses TCP port 443 for encrypted communication via TLS/SSL. If HTTP (port 80) works but HTTPS fails, the firewall is likely blocking outbound or inbound traffic on port 443, even though it allows common ports. This prevents the browser from establishing the secure connection required for HTTPS websites.

Answer

80

Answer

22

Answer

53

Question 2

After updating the firmware on a workstation, the system fails to boot and displays a 'Boot Device Not Found' error. The hard drive is detected in UEFI settings. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The boot mode changed from Legacy to UEFI (or vice versa). A firmware update can reset or change the UEFI/BIOS boot mode setting, causing the system to look for an EFI System Partition (ESP) when the OS was installed in Legacy/CSM mode, or vice versa. Since the drive is detected in UEFI settings, the hardware is fine — the mismatch between the configured boot mode and the installed bootloader is the most likely cause of 'Boot Device Not Found.'

Answer

The hard drive has failed due to the update

Answer

Secure Boot is blocking the bootloader

Answer

The CMOS battery needs replacement

Question 3

A company's web server is hosted internally and must be accessible from the internet using the domain name www.company.com. The public IP address of the router is 203.0.113.5. Which two network services must be correctly configured to make this work?

Accepted Answer

DNS and NAT. DNS is required to resolve the domain name www.company.com to the public IP address 203.0.113.5, so external users can reach the router. NAT (specifically destination NAT or port forwarding) is needed to translate the public IP and port to the internal private IP address of the web server, allowing inbound traffic to reach the internal host.

Answer

DNS and DHCP

Answer

NAT and ARP

Answer

DHCP and NAT

Question 4

A user reports that their computer cannot access any network resources, but the link light on the NIC is solid. The technician suspects a faulty cable. Which tool can quickly test the cable's continuity and detect a broken wire?

Accepted Answer

Cable tester. A cable tester sends a small electrical signal through each conductor in the cable and checks for a return signal on the correct pin. If a wire is broken, the tester will indicate an open circuit, confirming the fault. This is the fastest and most direct way to verify continuity in a copper Ethernet cable.

Answer

Multimeter

Answer

Toner and probe

Answer

Crimper

Question 5

A network administrator is designing a new subnet scheme for a company with 4 departments: Sales (50 devices), HR (25 devices), IT (10 devices), and Management (5 devices). The company uses the 10.0.0.0/8 network. To minimize wasted IP addresses, which subnet mask should be used for the Sales department?

Accepted Answer

255.255.255.192. The Sales department requires 50 usable IP addresses. A /26 subnet mask (255.255.255.192) provides 64 total addresses, with 62 usable addresses (2^6 - 2 = 62), which is the smallest subnet that can accommodate 50 devices without wasting IPs. This aligns with the goal of minimizing wasted addresses in the 10.0.0.0/8 network.

Answer

255.255.255.0

Answer

255.255.255.224

Answer

255.255.255.240

Question 6

A technician is troubleshooting a user's inability to reach a server at 172.16.50.100. The user's IP is 172.16.50.50 with subnet mask 255.255.255.0. The technician runs a traceroute and sees the first hop is the gateway (172.16.50.1), but the second hop times out. What does this indicate?

Accepted Answer

There is a routing problem between the gateway and the server.. The traceroute shows that the first hop (the gateway at 172.16.50.1) responds, but the second hop times out. This indicates that the packet successfully leaves the user's subnet and reaches the gateway, but fails to be routed further towards the server. This points to a routing issue beyond the local gateway, such as a missing route on the gateway or an intermediate router dropping the packets.

Answer

The user's IP address is in the wrong subnet.

Answer

The server is powered off.

Answer

The user's default gateway is incorrect.

Question 7

A user reports that their PC randomly restarts during boot-up, sometimes before the Windows logo appears. They have already tried reseating the RAM. Which component should be tested next?

Accepted Answer

Test the power supply unit. Random restarts during boot, especially before the Windows logo appears, strongly suggest a power delivery problem. The power supply unit (PSU) is the next logical component to test because insufficient or unstable voltage under load causes spontaneous shutdowns and reboots that occur before the OS even loads.

Answer

Replace the motherboard

Answer

Reinstall the operating system

Answer

Check for BIOS updates

Question 8

An IT manager is comparing cable broadband and fiber-optic for a new office. They need the lowest possible latency for real-time financial trading applications. Which connection type should they choose, and why?

Accepted Answer

Fiber-optic, because it provides lower latency due to the speed of light in glass and dedicated bandwidth. Fiber-optic connections transmit data as light pulses through glass, which travels at approximately 2/3 the speed of light in a vacuum, significantly faster than electrical signals in copper. Additionally, fiber provides dedicated bandwidth per user, eliminating the contention and latency spikes common in cable broadband's shared coaxial architecture. This combination of propagation speed and consistent low latency makes fiber the optimal choice for real-time financial trading where microseconds matter.

Answer

Cable broadband, because it uses coaxial cable which is faster than fiber

Answer

Fiber-optic, because it uses light signals and is not subject to electromagnetic interference

Answer

Cable broadband, because it has higher download speeds

Question 9

A user reports intermittent network drops. You suspect the issue might be with the network interface card (NIC) itself. You need to test the NIC's ability to send and receive data without connecting it to the network. Which tool should you use?

Accepted Answer

Loopback plug. A loopback plug (or loopback adapter) is the correct tool because it connects the transmit (TX) and receive (RX) pins of the NIC, allowing it to send data to itself. This tests the NIC's ability to transmit and receive frames without requiring a network connection, isolating the NIC as the potential fault point.

Answer

Cable tester

Answer

Toner probe

Answer

Multimeter

Question 10

A technician is upgrading a server CPU to improve multi-threaded performance for a virtualization host. The current CPU has 8 cores and 16 threads. Which of the following specifications is most important to consider for compatibility?

Accepted Answer

CPU socket type. The CPU socket type is the most critical compatibility factor because the physical and electrical interface between the CPU and motherboard must match exactly. Even if a CPU has the desired core count or clock speed, it cannot be installed if the socket is incompatible. For a server upgrade, the motherboard's socket (e.g., LGA 4189, SP3) dictates which CPU families are supported, making socket type the primary consideration before other specifications.

Answer

CPU clock speed

Answer

CPU core count

Answer

CPU TDP

Question 11

A company is expanding its office to a new building 5 kilometers away and needs to connect the two LANs so employees can share files and access the same servers as if they were in one location. They want a dedicated, high-speed connection without using the public internet. Which network type should be implemented?

Accepted Answer

Metropolitan Area Network (MAN). A Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) is designed to interconnect multiple LANs across a city or metropolitan region, typically up to 50 km, using dedicated fiber optic links such as Metro Ethernet or SONET/SDH. This provides the high-speed, private connection required without traversing the public internet, making it ideal for connecting two offices 5 km apart.

Answer

Local Area Network (LAN)

Answer

Wide Area Network (WAN)

Answer

Personal Area Network (PAN)

Question 12

A small office has intermittent network dropouts. A technician suspects electromagnetic interference (EMI) from nearby fluorescent lights affecting the unshielded twisted-pair (UTP) cables. Which tool can best confirm the presence of EMI on the cable?

Accepted Answer

Cable certifier. A cable certifier is the correct tool because it can measure crosstalk, return loss, and other electrical characteristics that reveal the presence of EMI on UTP cables. Unlike simple continuity testers, a certifier performs frequency-domain analysis (e.g., up to 500 MHz for Cat6a) to detect noise and interference that cause intermittent dropouts.

Answer

Tone generator

Answer

Ping

Answer

Wi-Fi analyzer

Question 13

A technician is configuring a network monitoring tool that uses SNMP to query network devices. Which two ports should be allowed for SNMP communication?

Accepted Answer

Port 161 and 162. SNMP uses UDP port 161 for sending queries and receiving responses between the manager and agents, and UDP port 162 for the agent to send unsolicited traps or informs to the manager. These two ports must be allowed through firewalls for proper SNMP communication.

Answer

Port 22 and 23

Answer

Port 80 and 443

Answer

Port 67 and 68

Question 14

A technician is tasked with deploying a virtualized environment for a small office using a single server. The server has 64 GB RAM, two 6-core CPUs, and a RAID 10 array. The technician needs to run four VMs: a domain controller (4 GB), a file server (8 GB), a web server (4 GB), and a database server (16 GB). After deployment, the database server is performing poorly. The technician notices that the hypervisor has allocated 2 virtual CPUs to each VM. Which of the following is the most likely cause of the database server’s poor performance?

Accepted Answer

The database server VM should have more virtual CPUs allocated, such as 4 vCPUs.. The database server is a resource-intensive application that often benefits from multiple CPU cores for parallel processing of queries and transactions. Allocating only 2 vCPUs to it, especially when other less demanding VMs also receive 2 vCPUs, makes it highly susceptible to CPU starvation. The server has 12 physical cores, so there is sufficient capacity to increase the database server's vCPU allocation (e.g., to 4 vCPUs) to better match its workload demands and improve performance. This tests understanding of proper resource allocation in virtualization.

Answer

The RAID 10 array is not fast enough for database I/O.

Answer

The hypervisor is using a Type 2 hypervisor, causing overhead.

Answer

The virtual switch is configured for 100 Mbps instead of 1 Gbps.

Question 15

A technician is configuring a new NAS with four 10 TB hard drives. The customer wants maximum usable capacity with fault tolerance for one drive failure. The technician sets up RAID 5, but after initialization, the usable capacity is only 10 TB instead of the expected 30 TB. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The array was accidentally configured as RAID 1 (mirroring) across two drives.. RAID 5 with four drives of equal size should yield (n-1) * capacity = 30 TB. A 10 TB result suggests only two drives are being used, possibly due to a misconfiguration like RAID 1 or a stripe set of two drives. This tests RAID 5 capacity calculation and troubleshooting.

Answer

One of the drives is defective and the array is using only three drives.

Answer

The drives are not all the same size; one is 5 TB.

Answer

The RAID controller is using a different stripe size.

Question 16

A technician is tasked with connecting a legacy printer that uses a parallel port to a modern laptop that only has USB ports. Which adapter is required to make this connection work?

Accepted Answer

USB to parallel adapter. A USB to parallel adapter allows a modern laptop to communicate with a legacy parallel printer. This requires an active adapter that converts USB signals to parallel. This tests knowledge of legacy connector adaptation and the need for active conversion.

Answer

USB to serial adapter

Answer

USB to PS/2 adapter

Answer

USB to VGA adapter

Question 17

A customer reports that their laptop can connect to the internet via a wired connection but cannot access any network shares or printers by hostname. They can ping the IP address of the file server. Which network service is most likely misconfigured?

Accepted Answer

DNS. The user can ping the file server by IP address, which confirms that basic IP connectivity (Layer 3) is working. However, they cannot access network shares or printers by hostname, which indicates that the system cannot resolve those hostnames to IP addresses. DNS (Domain Name System) is the service responsible for translating hostnames to IP addresses, so a misconfigured DNS server or client DNS settings would cause exactly this symptom.

Answer

DHCP

Answer

NAT

Answer

ARP

Question 18

A user reports that they can send emails but cannot receive any. The email client is configured with SMTP for outgoing and POP3 for incoming. The server is reachable. Which port is most likely blocked on the firewall for the incoming mail protocol?

Accepted Answer

Port 110. The user can send emails (SMTP works) but cannot receive them, and the incoming protocol is POP3. POP3 uses port 110 by default. Since the server is reachable, a firewall blocking port 110 would prevent the email client from retrieving incoming messages, while SMTP on port 25 remains unaffected.

Answer

Port 25

Answer

Port 443

Answer

Port 53

Question 19

A technician is tasked with connecting a legacy parallel port printer to a modern motherboard that lacks a parallel port header. The motherboard has an LPT header (25-pin) but it is not populated with a bracket. What is the best way to add a parallel port?

Accepted Answer

Purchase an LPT bracket that connects to the motherboard header. The LPT header on the motherboard provides the necessary signals for a parallel port. A bracket with a ribbon cable that connects to this header is the correct solution. A USB-to-parallel adapter would work but may have compatibility issues and is not the best use of the existing header. A PCIe parallel card is an alternative but unnecessary if the header is present.

Answer

Install a USB-to-parallel adapter

Answer

Use a PCIe parallel port expansion card

Answer

Solder wires directly to the motherboard's LPT header pins

Question 20

A client wants to add a second internal hard drive to their desktop for additional storage, but all SATA ports on the motherboard are already used. What is the best solution?

Accepted Answer

Install a SATA expansion card into an available PCIe slot.. An eSATA or SATA expansion card adds more SATA ports via a PCIe slot. USB adapters are slower, and replacing the motherboard is unnecessary. External enclosures are not internal.

Answer

Use a USB-to-SATA adapter and connect the drive externally.

Answer

Replace the motherboard with one that has more SATA ports.

Answer

Use an external hard drive enclosure connected via USB.