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Exam Information
Official specifications published by Cisco
Exam Format
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Skills this practice test covers
- Weigh waterfall and agile project methods, RPO and CAPEX/OPEX costs when choosing a design.
- Compare centralized, decentralized and hybrid control planes against what a network needs.
- Design modular networks that meet technical, operational, application and business constraints.
- Plan routing designs that scale, from OSPF areas and IS-IS to BGP path selection.
- Place services on premises or in SaaS, PaaS and IaaS clouds within data governance rules.
- Build segmentation, network access control and visibility into a secure design.
Explore related topics
400-007 exam content
5 domains · 37 topics · 197 of 217 questions sorted by domain
Business Strategy Design15%21 questions
Designs here start from the business, not the technology. Candidates work out what a waterfall or an agile project changes in the design, rollout and tuning of a network, and they size solutions for business continuity and operational sustainability with RPO, ROI, CAPEX/OPEX analysis and risk against reward.
Skills tested
- Adapt a design and its rollout plan to a waterfall or an agile project.
- Set a design's recovery targets from the business's recovery point objective (RPO).
- Compare the capital and operating costs of two designs over their life.
- Weigh the risk of a change against its reward before recommending it.
Questions by topic
- Business Continuity3
- CAPEX/OPEX Cost Analysis5
- Project Management Methodologies5
- Business Continuity and Risk Analysis4
- Business Continuity Design4
Control, Data, Management Plane and Operational Design25%25 questions
This domain follows traffic end to end through a network full of features and asks which plane does each job. Candidates choose control plane models, design automation and orchestration with APIs and model-driven management, and design SD-WAN, overlay, underlay and fabric solutions.
Skills tested
- Trace how a packet crosses QoS, NAT and tunnel features from one end of the network to the other.
- Separate and protect the data, control and management planes.
- Decide when a hybrid control plane fits better than a fully centralized or decentralized one.
- Design automation that uses APIs and model-driven management, with a path toward CI/CD.
- Design SD-WAN and fabric solutions with a clear overlay and underlay.
Questions by topic
- SD-WAN Policy Design1
- SD-Access Control Plane3
- Switch Management Interface Configuration2
- Network Management Frameworks3
- Automation/Orchestration Design3
- SD-WAN Control Plane4
- Management Plane2
- SD-WAN Design2
- Control Plane Technologies3
- Control Plane Protection2
Network Design30%90 questions
Most of the exam weight sits in this domain. Candidates design modular networks that stay resilient, scalable and secure, in traditional and software-defined architectures, while meeting technical, operational, application and business constraints. Implementation plans, migration and transformation are part of the domain too.
Skills tested
- Divide a network into modules so that a failure stays inside one of them.
- Balance technical and operational constraints against application needs and business requirements.
- Order the steps of a high-level implementation plan so that services stay up.
- Move a network to its target design in stages, with a fallback at each stage.
Official topics
- Resilient, scalable, and secure modular networks
Service Design15%26 questions
Applications drive this domain. Candidates shape the network around what each application needs, from voice and video to backups, storage, IoT and data center replication. They then plan cloud and hybrid services around regulatory compliance, data governance, service placement and cloud connectivity.
Skills tested
- Fit the design to what voice, video and storage replication need from the network.
- Choose SaaS, PaaS or IaaS for a business-critical service.
- Place a service where the rules on data sovereignty, ownership and locale allow it.
- Compare direct connect, cloud on ramp and MPLS direct connect options for hybrid access.
Questions by topic
- Cloud Connectivity Design3
- QoS Design3
- Cloud Connectivity2
- Multicast Service Design3
- Data Governance3
- Content Delivery Network (CDN) Design3
- Network Timing and Synchronization2
- IoT Network Design1
- Application Support Design3
- Cloud/Hybrid Solutions3
Security Design15%35 questions
This domain treats security as part of the design itself. Each scenario asks where to segment, how to control network access, what to monitor and where to enforce policy. When a scenario names a regulation, the design must comply with it as well.
Skills tested
- Draw segment boundaries that limit how far an attacker can move.
- Choose network access control for employees, guests and IoT devices.
- Plan visibility so that traffic between segments can be inspected.
- Map confidentiality, integrity and availability needs to specific controls.
Questions by topic
- SD-Access Security and Segmentation2
- Network Access Control4
- Segmentation6
- Remote Access VPN2
- Control Plane Protection1
- Firewall Design and High Availability3
- Security Principles3
- Access Control List Configuration3
- Security Visibility3
- Firewall Policy Design3
- Security Frameworks5
Requirements
- No formal prerequisites: anyone can book the exam.
- Recommended: at least seven years of designing and building large-scale networks.
- Recommended: deep routing and switching skills and experience with security, service provider technologies, automation and SDN.
- Recommended: an understanding of how business requirements and constraints shape a design.
About the 400-007 exam
400-007 checks whether a senior network engineer can make and defend design decisions for large enterprise networks. It is the written exam for Cisco Certified Design Expert (CCDE), which sits at the expert level of Cisco's design certifications. Candidates recommend and justify technologies, check and improve existing designs, and build high-level implementation plans. Every topic assumes a dual-stack network, and the exam is closed book.
Network Design carries the most weight, and the PlanetCert practice test gives it the most questions, from OSPF area design and BGP scale to data center interconnect and migration. The explanations show which requirement or constraint rules out each wrong design, which matters when several answers look workable. Study Mode suits Business Strategy Design, where RPO, ROI and CAPEX/OPEX trade-offs need a careful read. Brainy AI Assistant can compare two candidate designs against a scenario's constraints or explain when a hybrid control plane beats a centralized one.
How to earn the certification
- Earns
- Counts toward Cisco Certified Design Expert (CCDE)Expert
CCDE is valid for three years, and holders recertify by passing certain Cisco exams or by earning continuing education credits.
- Before
- 350-401 Implementing and Operating Cisco Enterprise Network Core Technologies (ENCOR)
Optional. Professional-level, hands-on knowledge of the enterprise networks that design scenarios assume.
- 300-420 Designing Cisco Enterprise Networks (ENSLD)
Optional. Enterprise design at the professional level, useful practice in turning requirements into designs.
- 350-401 Implementing and Operating Cisco Enterprise Network Core Technologies (ENCOR)
How to prepare for 400-007
- 1
Read Cisco's design task list
Cisco's unified exam topics open with the design tasks the exam checks. Practise each one on a sample network: recommend technologies, defend each decision, check a design against its requirements, improve it, and plan the rollout.
- 2
Explain past designs in writing
Take two networks from past work and write down why each design choice was made. Then test each choice against technical, operational, application and business constraints.
- 3
Give Network Design the most hours
Network Design carries the most weight. Practise modular designs, routing protocol scale, data center interconnect and staged migrations, with IPv4 and IPv6 in each case.
- 4
Learn the business terms
Business Strategy Design uses terms such as RPO, ROI and CAPEX/OPEX. Drill them in Flashcard Mode until each one can be applied to a scenario.
- 5
Practise long scenarios under time
Sit full timed runs of the 400-007 practice test once every domain has been studied. For each wrong answer, ask Brainy AI Assistant to name the constraint that ruled the chosen design out.
Start a timed 400-007run
Who 400-007 is for
- Network architects in charge of large enterprise networks who are aiming for CCDE.
- Senior engineers whose work is shifting from building networks to choosing how they are designed.
- Solution architects and technical leads who defend design choices to business stakeholders.
Typical job titles: Network architect · Senior network engineer · Network design engineer · Solution architect · Technical lead · Infrastructure architect
400-007 glossary
19 terms from the exam objectives and the vendor's official material, each defined in a sentence.
- Agile
- A project method built on short delivery cycles, with the plan revised as requirements change.
- CAPEX/OPEX
- The split between one-time spending on equipment (capital) and recurring running costs such as subscriptions and support (operating).
- CI/CD
- Continuous integration and continuous delivery: automated testing and rollout of changes, applied here to network configuration.
- CIA triad
- The three security goals of keeping data secret, unchanged and reachable for those who are allowed to use it.
- Cloud on-ramp
- An SD-WAN feature that sends branch traffic to a cloud provider over the best available path.
- Control plane
- The functions that build forwarding decisions, such as routing protocols exchanging routes.
- Data governance
- The rules on who owns data, where it may be stored and who may use it.
- Data sovereignty
- The rule that stored data is subject to the laws of the country it is kept in.
- IaaS
- Infrastructure as a service: rented servers, storage and networks on which the customer runs its own software.
- Model-driven management
- Managing devices through data models such as YANG, which tools read and change through APIs.
- Network access control
- Checks that decide whether a user or device may join the network and what it may reach.
- Overlay
- A virtual network built from tunnels that run on top of the physical network, as in SD-WAN.
- PaaS
- Platform as a service: a managed platform on which the customer runs its own applications without managing servers.
- ROI
- Return on investment: the gain a design brings compared with what it costs.
- RPO
- Recovery point objective: how far back in time the latest usable copy of data may be after a failure.
- SaaS
- Software as a service: a complete application that the provider runs and the customer uses over the network.
- Service placement
- The choice of location for each service, such as a company data center or a public cloud, weighed by cost, performance and regulation.
- Underlay
- The physical network and its routing that carry the tunnels of an overlay.
- Waterfall
- A project method that moves through fixed phases, such as design, build and test, one after another.
Related practice tests
- 300-535Automating and Programming Cisco Service Provider Solutions (SPAUTO)
- 200-901CCNA Automation (DevNet Associate)
- 200-201CCNA Cybersecurity (CyberOps Associate)
- 200-301Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA)
- 300-420Designing Cisco Enterprise Networks (ENSLD)