Curated interview practice questions with answers. These are practice scenarios, not a verified list of past interview questions.
About Capgemini hiring for CCNA roles
Capgemini is a French multinational IT services and consulting group providing technology, engineering, cloud and data services. India is its largest employee base, supporting projects in testing, application development, SAP, data engineering and analytics for global clients. It hires freshers as analysts and software engineers, and experienced professionals in QA automation, data and cloud roles.
For CCNA roles, this Capgemini practice set focuses most on IP Services (7), Network Security (5), Switching and VLANs (4), Network Fundamentals (4). It has 13 easy, 16 medium, 1 hard questions, so you can start easy and work up to the harder ones.
Company type
IT services
Headquarters
Paris, France
Main India offices
Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad
Capgemini CCNA interview process
Online assessment (pseudocode + English)
Game-based aptitude test
Technical interview
HR round
Typical pattern based on public candidate experiences. Rounds vary by role, team and year.
Solved for CapgeminiStart practicing
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Dynamic Trunking Protocol negotiates whether a link becomes a trunk. Modes are dynamic auto, dynamic desirable, trunk and access. Auto plus auto stays access, while desirable with auto or desirable forms a trunk. Attackers can use DTP to form a trunk and reach all VLANs, so best practice is to hard-code access or trunk and use switchport nonegotiate on trunks.
02
How does controller-based networking differ from traditional networking?
Traditionally each device has its own control plane and is configured box by box. In controller-based or software-defined networking, a central controller holds the policy and pushes it to devices through southbound APIs such as NETCONF or OpenFlow, while applications talk to the controller through northbound REST APIs. This gives consistent configuration, automation and network-wide visibility.
03
Write a simple Ansible playbook that configures NTP on IOS devices.
With short (802.1D revised) costs: 10 Mbps is 100, 100 Mbps is 19, 1 Gbps is 4 and 10 Gbps is 2. With the long pathcost method, 1 Gbps is 20000 and 10 Gbps is 2000, which distinguishes higher speeds. Root path cost is the sum of costs on ports toward the root, and the lowest total wins when choosing root ports.
A voice VLAN lets an IP phone and a PC share one switch port while keeping their traffic separate. The port is an access port in the data VLAN, and the switch tells the phone through CDP or LLDP-MED to tag voice frames with the voice VLAN. This allows QoS priority for voice and separate addressing. Configure it with switchport voice vlan.
06
What is the difference between site-to-site and remote-access VPNs?
A site-to-site VPN connects whole networks, usually two routers or firewalls, using an always-on IPsec tunnel, so users do not need any client. A remote-access VPN connects individual users from laptops or phones to the company network using a client with TLS or IPsec, and authenticates each user. Both encrypt traffic over the internet to provide confidentiality and integrity.
Mark interfaces, match inside hosts with an ACL and overload the outside interface.
interface GigabitEthernet0/1
ip nat inside
interface GigabitEthernet0/0
ip nat outside
access-list 1 permit 192.168.0.0 0.0.255.255
ip nat inside source list 1 interface GigabitEthernet0/0 overload
show ip nat translations
08
After adding a new VLAN, users on one access switch cannot use it but others can. Why?
The most likely cause is the trunk to that switch does not allow the new VLAN, because someone configured an explicit allowed list. Check show interfaces trunk and add it with switchport trunk allowed vlan add 50, not without add, which would replace the list. Also confirm the VLAN exists on that switch with show vlan brief, especially if VTP is transparent.
09
How do you configure PortFast and BPDU Guard on access ports?
Apply per port or globally for all PortFast ports.
interface range GigabitEthernet1/0/1 - 46
switchport mode access
spanning-tree portfast
spanning-tree bpduguard enable
! or globally
spanning-tree portfast default
spanning-tree portfast bpduguard default
errdisable recovery cause bpduguard
errdisable recovery interval 300
10
How do you configure port security with sticky MACs?
DHCP uses the DORA process: the client broadcasts Discover, the server answers with an Offer, the client broadcasts a Request for that offer, and the server confirms with an Acknowledgement. The lease includes IP, mask, gateway, DNS servers and lease time. Clients renew at 50 percent of the lease. DHCP uses UDP ports 67 for the server and 68 for the client.
Syslog has eight levels from 0 to 7: emergency, alert, critical, error, warning, notification, informational and debugging. A useful memory line is Every Awesome Computer Engineer Will Need Ice cream Daily. Setting logging trap 6 sends levels 0 to 6 to the server. Syslog uses UDP 514 by default, and logs should carry timestamps with service timestamps log datetime msec.
The TCP/IP model has four or five layers. Its Application layer covers OSI layers 5 to 7, Transport maps to Layer 4, Internet maps to Layer 3, and Network Access (or Link plus Physical) covers layers 1 and 2. CCNA uses the five-layer version. Real protocols such as HTTP, TCP and IP are defined by the TCP/IP suite, so it is the practical model.
DHCP Discover is a broadcast, and routers do not forward broadcasts, so a central DHCP server cannot hear clients on other subnets. A relay agent, configured with ip helper-address on the gateway interface, converts the broadcast into a unicast to the server and adds the gateway IP so the server picks the right scope. This lets one server serve many VLANs.
The router ID is a 32-bit value chosen in this order: manually configured router-id, then the highest IP on an up loopback interface, then the highest IP on an up physical interface. It is chosen when the OSPF process starts, so changes need clear ip ospf process. Best practice is to set it manually so it is stable and easy to recognise in the database.
Quality of Service gives different treatment to traffic types when links are congested. Voice needs low delay (under 150 ms one way), low jitter (under 30 ms) and low loss (under 1 percent), while bulk file transfer can wait. QoS tools classify and mark traffic, queue it with priority queues for voice, and police or shape rates. Without congestion QoS has no effect.
Single-mode fiber has a small core (about 9 microns) and uses a laser, so it carries light over long distances, often 10 km or more. Multimode fiber has a larger core (50 or 62.5 microns), uses cheaper LED or VCSEL optics and suits shorter runs inside a building or data center, usually up to a few hundred metres at 10 Gbps. SFP modules must match the fiber type.
18
What is the native VLAN and what problems can a mismatch cause?
The native VLAN is the VLAN whose frames cross a trunk untagged, VLAN 1 by default. Both ends must use the same native VLAN; if they differ, frames leak between VLANs and CDP logs a native VLAN mismatch. For security, set the native VLAN to an unused ID, do not put users in it, and optionally tag it with vlan dot1q tag native to prevent VLAN hopping.
19
What are the key elements of a security program for a network?
A security program combines user awareness training, physical access control, and technical controls such as strong authentication, firewalls, IPS, VPNs and patching. It is built around the CIA triad: confidentiality, integrity and availability. Policies define what is allowed, and logging and monitoring detect problems. CCNA focuses on device hardening, ACLs, Layer 2 security, AAA, VPNs and wireless security.
Example line:
O 10.2.2.0/24 [110/20] via 10.0.12.2, 00:05:12, GigabitEthernet0/0
O is the source (OSPF), 10.2.2.0/24 the prefix, 110 the administrative distance and 20 the metric, 10.0.12.2 the next hop, then the age and exit interface. C is connected, L local host route, S static, D EIGRP and an asterisk marks the candidate default.
21
What is the difference between a hub, a switch and a router?
A hub is a Layer 1 repeater: it floods every bit out of every port, so all ports share one collision domain. A switch is Layer 2: it learns MAC addresses and forwards frames only to the correct port, giving each port its own collision domain. A router is Layer 3: it forwards packets between IP networks and separates broadcast domains.
22
How does a router choose the best route to a destination?
First it uses longest prefix match: the most specific matching prefix wins, so 10.1.1.0/24 beats 10.1.0.0/16. If the same prefix comes from different sources, the lowest administrative distance wins. If the same protocol offers several paths, the lowest metric wins, and equal metrics can be load-balanced with ECMP. Only the winners are installed in the routing table.
Allow web traffic from one subnet to a server and block the rest of that subnet.
ip access-list extended WEB-ONLY
10 permit tcp 192.168.10.0 0.0.0.255 host 10.0.0.80 eq 443
20 deny ip 192.168.10.0 0.0.0.255 10.0.0.0 0.0.0.255
30 permit ip any any
interface vlan 10
ip access-group WEB-ONLY in
show access-lists WEB-ONLY
24
Tell me about a time you found a security issue and reported it.
Situation: during a routine audit I noticed SNMP v2c with the default community public on several access switches. Task: close the gap without disrupting monitoring. Action: I reported it to my lead with evidence, proposed SNMPv3 with an ACL, tested with the monitoring team and rolled out in two batches. Result: the risk was closed in a week and SNMP checks were added to our device baseline.
25
How do you do the basic initial configuration of a new switch?
Set the hostname, secure access and save the config.
enable
configure terminal
hostname SW1
enable secret Str0ngPass
service password-encryption
banner motd #Authorized access only#
line console 0
password ConPass
login
end
copy running-config startup-config
Global unicast (2000::/3) is publicly routable. Unique local (fc00::/7, in practice fd00::/8) is like private IPv4. Link-local (fe80::/10) is auto-created on every IPv6 interface and used for neighbour discovery and routing next hops. Multicast is ff00::/8, for example ff02::1 all nodes and ff02::2 all routers. Anycast is a unicast address shared by several devices. IPv6 has no broadcast.
27
What is the difference between policing and shaping?
Policing drops or re-marks traffic that exceeds a rate immediately, with no buffering, so it causes TCP retransmissions; it is used inbound or by ISPs. Shaping buffers excess traffic and sends it later, smoothing bursts to a configured rate at the cost of delay; it is used outbound, for example to match a 100 Mbps subscription on a 1 Gbps port.
28
How do you back up and restore a device configuration?
Copy the config to a server and back.
copy running-config tftp://10.0.0.40/R1-backup.cfg
copy running-config scp://admin@10.0.0.40/R1.cfg
copy tftp://10.0.0.40/R1-backup.cfg running-config
configure replace flash:R1-good.cfg
archive
path flash:R1-archive
write-memory
configure replace gives a clean rollback instead of merging.
EtherChannel bundles 2 to 8 physical links into one logical port-channel. STP sees it as one link, so all members forward instead of one being blocked. It adds bandwidth and redundancy, as one member failing does not drop the channel. Traffic is load-balanced per flow using a hash of MAC, IP or port fields, so a single flow still uses only one member link.
Areas limit how far detailed LSAs flood, so SPF runs on a smaller database and changes in one area do not force recalculation everywhere. Area 0 is the backbone and every other area must connect to it, directly or through a virtual link. Routers connecting areas are ABRs and can summarize routes between areas. Single-area OSPF is the focus of CCNA.
Tips to crack the Capgemini CCNA interview
Practise game-based cognitive tests and pseudocode questions, which are commonly part of Capgemini's online assessment.
Prepare a short explanation of your projects, focusing on your role, tools used and what you would improve.
Learn about Capgemini's engineering arm and its work in sectors like automotive and financial services to show interest.
Keep a one-minute story ready for every project on your CV: problem, your part, tools, result.
Practise the hard questions on this page aloud; Capgemini interviewers usually ask follow-ups on your first answer.
Frequently asked questions
How many rounds are there in the Capgemini CCNA interview?
Candidates usually go through 4 stages: Online assessment (pseudocode + English); Game-based aptitude test; Technical interview; HR round. The exact rounds change with the role, team, location and your experience, so confirm the process with the recruiter.
Which topics should I prepare for the Capgemini CCNA interview?
This practice set leans on IP Services (7), Network Security (5), Switching and VLANs (4), Network Fundamentals (4). Revise those first, then practise explaining one or two of your own projects end to end, because most Capgemini interviewers ask you to walk through real work.
Are these the exact questions asked at Capgemini?
No. These are curated practice questions that match the skills and difficulty usually tested in it services interviews like Capgemini's. They are not a leaked or verified list of past questions.
Where does Capgemini hire CCNA professionals in India?
Capgemini has large teams in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad. Openings and locations change often, so check the Capgemini careers page and filter by city and experience.