CompTIA A+ Practice Test (220-1201)

A cable tester is specifically designed to test the integrity of cable pairs and ensure the correct pinout configuration. This tool will check for problems such as open wires, shorts, crossed pairs, and other issues that might affect data transmission. While the other tools listed are useful in different contexts, the cable tester is the best choice for directly testing the physical cables themselves. A WiFi analyzer is used for wireless networks, a punchdown tool is for terminating wires, and a loopback plug tests a network port rather than the entire cable.

Installing a solid-state drive (SSD) is the best way to improve boot and application performance. Because SSDs have no moving parts, they deliver dramatically lower latency and much higher sustained read/write speeds than any mechanical drive, including 7200 RPM models or hybrid drives that cache only a small amount of data. Faster-spinning or hybrid disks offer incremental gains, and additional cloud storage has no effect on local system startup or software launch times.

The correct answer is 'Cellular' as it uses cell towers to provide wide coverage for internet access and allows users to maintain connectivity while on the move. DSL and Fiber are wired connections that are not mobile. Satellite internet requires a stationary dish and is not designed for use while in motion.

Thunderbolt 3 is the fastest interface among the options, supporting data transfer speeds up to 40 Gbps. This is significantly faster than the other choices. USB 3.2 Gen 2 offers speeds up to 10 Gbps, while USB 2.0 is limited to 480 Mbps. A serial (RS-232) connection is a legacy interface with much slower speeds, measured in kilobits per second, and is unsuitable for high-speed data transfer.

In virtualized environments, the virtual machine typically synchronizes its clock with the host machine, known as the hypervisor. If the hypervisor's time is not set correctly, it can override the individual virtual machine's settings after every reboot or time synchronization event. Therefore, checking and correcting the hypervisor's date and time settings is crucial. The other options might also affect time settings, but they are less likely causes compared to the direct synchronization with the hypervisor's clock and would not persist after correcting them directly on the server.

Chassis Intrusion Detection is a BIOS/UEFI setting available on some motherboards that can detect when a computer's case has been opened. This feature alerts an administrator or logs the event the next time the system boots.

Lithium-ion batteries are the most common type for small mobile devices like laptops and smart devices. They offer high-energy density in a small form factor, charge quickly, and discharge at a steady rate, making them ideal for portable electronics. Other battery types are not suitable for this purpose; for example, lead-acid batteries are too heavy and are used in vehicles, while alkaline batteries are typically single-use and found in lower-power household devices.

A hybrid cloud combines both on-premises (private) infrastructure and public cloud services. This model offers the flexibility of keeping sensitive data on-premises while utilizing public cloud resources for less critical operations, optimizing both security and scalability. Private clouds are limited to on-premises or dedicated data centers, while public clouds are completely off-site services available to multiple users. Community clouds are shared among several organizations with common concerns.

Lithium-ion batteries deliver a high energy-to-weight ratio, making them ideal for portable devices such as smartphones and tablets that require long runtimes without adding excessive mass. Other chemistries-such as nickel-cadmium, nickel-metal hydride, or lead-acid-either suffer from lower energy density, higher weight, or form factors unsuitable for modern mobile devices, which is why they are rarely used in today's handheld electronics.

Because the 2.4 GHz band is only 83.5 MHz wide, channels overlap heavily; channels 1, 6, and 11 are the only three that do not overlap. The 5 GHz band spans several UNII sub-bands, giving roughly two dozen discrete 20 MHz channels (24-25 depending on regulatory domain). Therefore, the 5 GHz band offers far more non-overlapping channels, reducing co-channel interference when multiple WLANs operate in the same area.

The punchdown tool is designed to insert and secure wire terminations firmly within a patch panel or keystone jack while trimming off any excess wire. It is commonly used during the installation of cable (e.g. Cat5e, Cat6) in network components that require fixed placement of wires. Tools such as wire cutters or crimpers do not perform the same function, as they are used for cutting wire or affixing connectors respectively, not seating wire within a terminal block.

A PCIe NIC is the best choice because the PCI Express bus delivers hundreds of megabytes per second per lane (250 MB/s in PCIe 1.0; higher in later versions), easily supporting Gigabit and multi-Gigabit Ethernet. The older 32-bit, 33 MHz PCI bus peaks at about 133 MB/s, creating a bottleneck for high-speed NICs. USB-based or wireless adapters can work but introduce additional overhead or variable performance that is generally slower and less consistent than a wired PCIe solution.

Worn or dirty separation pads (and the related pickup-roller/separator mechanism) cannot provide enough friction differential to separate one sheet from the next, so the printer pulls multiple pages at once. Inspecting, cleaning, or replacing the separation pad is therefore the logical first step. Paper quality, humidity, and static can also contribute to multi-feeds, but those factors should be checked only after ruling out mechanical wear. Firmware updates and print-queue settings do not affect the physical separation of sheets.

A redundant power supply system in a high-availability server environment is primarily designed to provide a failover option in the event of a power supply unit (PSU) failure. This ensures that the server continues to operate, significantly reducing downtime. Other advantages like improved efficiency or increased power output can be misinterpreted as primary benefits but they are secondary to the need for redundancy, which focuses mainly on maintaining uptime in response to PSU failures.

Port 995 is the designated port for secure POP3 communications, also known as POP3S or POP3 over SSL/TLS. When configuring an email client to retrieve emails securely via POP3, it should be set to use this port, which facilitates encrypted communication to prevent eavesdropping. Port 110 is used for non-secure POP3 connections. Port 587 is for submitting emails via SMTP securely using STARTTLS. Port 993 is typically used for the secure version of the IMAP protocol (IMAPS).