CCDE study plan
CCDE · Give each week a clear focus.
8 weeks · About 7 hours per week
Network Design Fundamentals and Business Alignment
Derive a complete requirements table (functional, non-functional, scalability, resiliency, cost, compliance) from a written business scenario you invent, and rank each requirement by business impact
Diagram the current-state and target-state topology for that scenario, labeling all failure domains, device roles, and existing constraints
Quantify at least three design trade-offs (for example modularity versus convergence, redundancy versus cost) using explicit criteria and weights rather than intuition
Identify which requirements would force a technology change versus a configuration change, and justify each classification
Your checkpoint
A 4-6 page design brief for your invented scenario containing the weighted requirements table, current/target topology diagram, and a written trade-off analysis with a recommendation and rejected alternatives.
Enterprise LAN and Campus Design
Design a two-tier campus topology that satisfies a stated user count, PoE budget, and 99.9 percent availability target, and document the failure analysis for each link and node loss
Select and justify Layer 2 versus Layer 3 access design for three different building profiles (dense office, warehouse, clinical), including spanning-tree or routed-access implications
Size uplink capacity and oversubscription ratios from measured or assumed traffic profiles, and state the assumptions explicitly
Plan a migration path from the existing campus design to the target design with rollback points at each stage
Your checkpoint
A campus design document with per-building bill of materials logic, oversubscription calculations, a failure-impact matrix, and a phased migration plan with rollback criteria.
Routing Protocol Design and Policy
Choose IGP and EGP boundaries for a multi-region enterprise and justify each area, AS, or level boundary against convergence, scale, and policy requirements
Write route-policy intent statements (what must be preferred, filtered, or summarized) before writing any configuration syntax
Design summarization and filtering at every boundary and predict the forwarding behavior when a summary is partially unreachable
Compare at least two convergence-tuning approaches and state the measurable convergence target each achieves
Your checkpoint
A routing design document containing an annotated protocol-boundary diagram, a route-policy intent table (source, destination, desired action, rationale), and a summarization map showing where each prefix is aggregated or filtered.
Enterprise WAN and Service Provider Edge Design
Compare at least three WAN transport options (for example MPLS L3VPN, internet with overlay, and dedicated circuit) against stated latency, jitter, cost, and availability requirements
Design the enterprise-to-provider edge including eBGP policy, prefix advertisement, and provider-independent versus provider-assigned addressing
Design a hybrid WAN that routes latency-sensitive traffic over one transport and bulk traffic over another, and define the failover behavior
Specify the SLA metrics you would contract for and how each is verified in operations
Your checkpoint
A WAN design decision record comparing the transport options against weighted criteria, plus an edge routing policy table and a failover test plan listing the exact tests and expected outcomes.
Data Center and Cloud Connectivity Design
Design a data center fabric (spine-leaf or alternative) for a stated east-west traffic volume and rack density, and justify the chosen oversubscription ratio
Design multi-site data center interconnection and workload placement rules that meet stated RTO and RPO targets
Design cloud connectivity using at least two paths (dedicated interconnect plus internet VPN) and document the routing and failover behavior between them
Map which workloads belong on-premises, in cloud, or both, using latency, data gravity, and compliance criteria
Your checkpoint
A data center and cloud connectivity design with a fabric topology diagram, workload placement matrix, RTO/RPO mapping per workload tier, and a documented hybrid-connectivity failover sequence.
Network Security Design
Place security enforcement points (firewalls, segmentation, inspection) in the designs from weeks 2 through 5 and justify each placement against the traffic it must see
Design a segmentation scheme that enforces the stated trust boundaries without breaking required application flows, and list every permitted cross-segment flow with its business justification
Design identity, access, and management-plane security for network devices, including out-of-band access and credential handling
Produce an adversary-oriented threat model for the end-to-end design and map each identified threat to a mitigating control
Your checkpoint
A security architecture overlay document with an enforcement-point diagram, a permitted-flow matrix, a threat-to-control mapping table, and a list of residual risks accepted by the business.
Network Services, QoS, and Multicast Design
Define end-to-end QoS classes, marking boundaries, and per-hop behaviors for voice, video, interactive, and bulk traffic, and state the bandwidth guarantee per class
Design a multicast deployment for a stated use case, including group-to-RP mapping, PIM mode choice, and boundary filtering
Specify which services (addressing, naming, time, monitoring) are centralized versus distributed and justify each choice by failure impact
Validate that the QoS and multicast designs do not conflict with the routing and security designs from earlier weeks
Your checkpoint
A network services and QoS design with a class-of-service table, per-link bandwidth allocation calculations, a multicast topology and RP plan, and a cross-check list confirming consistency with prior weeks' designs.
Network Automation, Programmability, and Operability & Network Design Fundamentals and Business Alignment
Define the operational model for the end-to-end design: configuration management, change control, telemetry, and failure detection with target detection times
Design an automation and programmability approach (source of truth, templating, validation, CI pipeline) and state what is intentionally left manual
Write a design defense summarizing the top five decisions, the evidence behind each, and the conditions under which each decision would be reversed
Re-read the business requirements from week 1 and verify every one is traced to a design element or an explicit accepted gap
Your checkpoint
An operability and automation design plus a full requirements traceability matrix mapping each week-1 requirement to a design element, with a one-page executive summary defending the overall architecture.
Milestones
Week 2: You can explain, without notes, why each campus topology choice follows from a stated requirement, and your failure-impact matrix accounts for every single point of failure.
Week 4: Your WAN decision record names the criteria weights before the options, and you can defend the chosen transport against the runner-up using numbers rather than preference.
Week 6: Every permitted cross-segment flow has a named business owner and justification, and no threat in your model lacks a mapped control or an explicitly accepted residual risk.
Week 8: Every week-1 requirement appears in the traceability matrix with a design element or an accepted gap, and you can deliver the five-decision defense in under fifteen minutes without slides.