Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) 2025 – 400 Free Practice Questions to Pass the Exam

The equation for calculating key pairs in a network is represented by N(N-1)/2, where N is the number of participants in the network. This formula comes from combinatorial mathematics and is used to determine how many unique pairs can be formed from a set of N individuals.

To understand this, consider that each participant can potentially connect with every other participant exactly once. If you have N individuals, each one can connect to N-1 others. However, this leads to counting each connection twice (once for each participant in the pair), hence the division by 2 in the formula.

For example, if there are 4 participants in a network, the possible unique communication pairs would be (1,2), (1,3), (1,4), (2,3), (2,4), and (3,4), resulting in a total of 6 pairs, which is accurately calculated as 4(4-1)/2 = 6.

The other options do not accurately represent the concept of unique pair formation. N+2 suggests a simple addition, which doesn't reflect the complexity of pairing individuals. N^2 and N^3 imply a multiplicative growth that does not correspond to the way pairings are formed,