Run the three-question split against five real connectivity faults

applied · 70 min · Objective 1.3

Task

Take the device / network / account split and apply it to five faults you create deliberately on your own devices, recording which test identified each one and how long it took.

Steps

  1. Write lab/split/method.md stating the three questions and the single cheapest test for each.
  2. Create five faults on your own device, one at a time, reverting each before the next: airplane mode with Wi-Fi manually re-enabled; cellular data disabled for one application; a saved wireless profile for a network whose passphrase you have changed; data saver enabled; and a manually set wrong DNS server on the computer.
  3. For each, record in lab/split/faults.csv with header fault,layer,test_that_found_it,seconds,user_description -- where user_description is how a non-technical user would report it.
  4. Record in lab/split/order.md which order of tests would have found all five fastest, and why that is not the order of likelihood.
  5. Revert every change, and record in lab/split/reverted.txt one line per fault confirming the device is back to normal.

Verify

grep -Eic 'device|network|account' lab/split/method.md
awk -F, 'NR>1 && NF>=5 {n++} END {print n" fault(s) recorded"}' lab/split/faults.csv
awk -F, 'NR>1 {print $2}' lab/split/faults.csv | sort -u | wc -l
grep -c . lab/split/reverted.txt
grep -c . lab/split/order.md

Five faults recorded, at least two distinct layers among them, five revert confirmations, and an ordering note. If every fault landed in the same layer, the fault set was not varied enough to test the split.

Notes

The user_description column is the one that pays off later. Every one of these five faults is reported as 'the internet is not working', and recognising five different faults behind one sentence is the actual skill.

This is an independent study companion for CompTIA A+ Core 1 220-1201 and is not produced by or endorsed by CompTIA.