ANS-C01 Network Management and Operations — Timed 30 Questions

Question 1

A company has deployed a centralized NAT gateway in a VPC and uses VPC Flow Logs to monitor traffic. The network team notices that traffic from an EC2 instance in a private subnet to the internet is not being logged in the flow logs. The flow logs are configured at the VPC level with the 'ALL' format. What is the most likely cause of this issue?

Accepted Answer

Flow logs must be created specifically for the NAT gateway's elastic network interface to capture its traffic.. VPC Flow Logs capture traffic at the elastic network interface (ENI) level. A centralized NAT gateway has its own ENI in the public subnet, and traffic from private instances is routed through that ENI when it reaches the internet. To log that traffic, flow logs must be created specifically for the NAT gateway's ENI, not just at the VPC level, because VPC-level flow logs capture traffic for ENIs within that VPC but do not inherently capture traffic passing through the NAT gateway's ENI unless that ENI is explicitly targeted.

Answer

The EC2 instance is using a different VPC than the one where flow logs are configured.

Answer

The flow log format is set to 'ALL' which excludes NAT gateway traffic.

Answer

The flow logs are configured to capture only rejected traffic by default.

Question 2

A multinational corporation is using AWS Transit Gateway to connect multiple VPCs and on-premises networks via AWS Direct Connect and VPN. The network team is experiencing asymmetric routing for traffic between two VPCs that both have routes to the same on-premises network. Which feature should the team implement to resolve this issue?

Accepted Answer

Use AS_PATH prepending on the BGP advertisements from the on-premises router to influence route preference.. AS_PATH prepending allows the on-premises router to artificially lengthen the AS_PATH for specific BGP routes, making those routes less preferred. This influences route selection in the Transit Gateway and VPC route tables, ensuring that traffic from each VPC takes a consistent path and eliminating asymmetric routing.

Answer

Deploy a NAT Gateway in each VPC to force symmetric traffic.

Answer

Create a Transit Gateway peering attachment between the two VPCs.

Answer

Enable VPC Flow Logs to detect and alert on asymmetric flows.

Question 3

A company uses AWS Site-to-Site VPN to connect its on-premises network to AWS. The VPN connection is established, but traffic from on-premises to AWS is not working. The on-premises network team confirms that the on-premises firewall is allowing traffic to the VPC CIDR. What should the network engineer check in AWS to resolve the issue?

Accepted Answer

Check the VPC route tables to ensure routes to the on-premises network point to the virtual private gateway.. Option D is correct because even if the VPN tunnel is up and BGP is peering, traffic will not flow unless the VPC route tables have a route pointing to the virtual private gateway (VGW) for the on-premises CIDR. Without this route, the VPC has no path to forward return traffic back to the on-premises network, causing asymmetric routing or blackholing.

Answer

Verify that the VPN tunnel status is UP.

Answer

Review the customer gateway configuration for incorrect BGP settings.

Answer

Ensure the virtual private gateway is attached to the correct VPC.

Question 4

A company is using AWS Client VPN to provide remote access to its VPC. Users report that they can connect to the VPN but cannot reach resources in the VPC. The Client VPN endpoint is associated with a single subnet in the VPC, and the authorization rules allow access to the entire VPC CIDR (10.0.0.0/16). The security group assigned to the Client VPN endpoint allows all traffic. What is the most likely cause of this issue?

Accepted Answer

The route table associated with the Client VPN subnet does not have a route for the client IP range.. The Client VPN endpoint is associated with a single subnet in the VPC. For traffic from the VPN clients to reach resources in the VPC, the route table of that subnet must include a route pointing the client IP range back to the VPN endpoint's network interface. Without this route, the subnet has no path to forward return traffic to the clients, even though the clients can establish the VPN tunnel. Option B correctly identifies this missing route as the root cause.

Answer

The security group assigned to the Client VPN endpoint does not allow inbound traffic from the client CIDR.

Answer

The authorization rule is too broad and is blocking traffic.

Answer

The Client VPN endpoint does not have a security group association group configured.

Question 5

A company has a Direct Connect connection with a private VIF to a VPC. The on-premises router is advertising a default route (0.0.0.0/0) via BGP. The VPC has an internet gateway attached, and the route table has a default route to the internet gateway. The network team notices that traffic from on-premises to the internet is not working as expected. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The on-premises router is advertising a default route, causing a routing conflict.. The on-premises router advertising a default route (0.0.0.0/0) via BGP over the private VIF causes a routing conflict because the VPC route table already has a default route pointing to the internet gateway. When traffic from on-premises destined for the internet enters the VPC, it matches the more specific BGP-learned default route and is forwarded back toward the on-premises router (or black-holed), rather than being sent to the internet gateway. This creates a routing loop or asymmetric routing, breaking internet connectivity from on-premises.

Answer

The BGP session is not established.

Answer

The VPC route table does not have a route to the internet gateway for the on-premises traffic.

Answer

The private VIF is associated with the wrong VLAN.

Question 6

A company is using AWS Transit Gateway to interconnect multiple VPCs and on-premises networks. The network team wants to log and monitor all traffic flows across the Transit Gateway for security analysis. Which TWO actions should the team take? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Send the flow logs to Amazon CloudWatch Logs for monitoring and alerting.. Option B is correct because VPC Flow Logs can be published to Amazon CloudWatch Logs, enabling real-time monitoring, alerting, and integration with AWS Lambda or third-party tools for security analysis. This allows the network team to capture IP traffic information for all flows across Transit Gateway attachments when flow logs are enabled on those attachments. Option C is correct because VPC Flow Logs must be enabled at the Transit Gateway attachment level (not on the Transit Gateway itself) to capture traffic traversing the Transit Gateway, as the Transit Gateway is a network transit hub and does not generate its own flow logs.

Answer

Use AWS Config rules to evaluate the Transit Gateway route tables.

Answer

Enable VPC Flow Logs on the Transit Gateway itself.

Answer

Configure VPC Traffic Mirroring on the Transit Gateway.

Question 7

A company has a Direct Connect connection with multiple virtual interfaces (VIFs). The network team notices that traffic to a specific VPC is intermittently failing. The team suspects an issue with BGP routing. Which THREE steps should the team take to troubleshoot the BGP session? (Choose THREE.)

Accepted Answer

View the BGP route advertisements received by the on-premises router from AWS.. Option A is correct because viewing the BGP route advertisements received by the on-premises router from AWS directly reveals whether the expected prefixes are being advertised. If the routes are missing or incorrect, the VPC traffic will fail intermittently, making this a primary troubleshooting step for BGP routing issues.

Answer

Check the Direct Connect endpoint health in the AWS Management Console.

Answer

Examine VPC Flow Logs for dropped packets on the virtual interface.

Question 8

A company uses AWS Transit Gateway to connect multiple VPCs and on-premises networks via VPN. Network engineers report intermittent connectivity issues between VPC A and the on-premises network. The transit gateway route table shows the on-premises CIDR (10.0.0.0/8) propagated from the VPN attachment. VPC A has a subnet route pointing to the transit gateway for 10.0.0.0/8. Which step should the engineer take FIRST to diagnose the issue?

Accepted Answer

In the transit gateway route table, verify that the VPN attachment is correctly associated and that the 10.0.0.0/8 route is propagated and has the correct attachment.. Option C is correct because the first diagnostic step for intermittent connectivity through a transit gateway is to verify the route table configuration. The engineer must confirm that the VPN attachment is correctly associated with the transit gateway route table and that the 10.0.0.0/8 route is propagated from the VPN attachment, as a missing or misassociated route would cause traffic to be dropped even if the VPN tunnel is up.

Answer

Verify that the VPN tunnel status shows as UP on both sides.

Answer

Enable VPC Flow Logs on VPC A to verify traffic reaching the transit gateway.

Answer

Check the security group rules on the EC2 instances in VPC A for outbound traffic.

Question 9

A global e-commerce company is migrating to AWS and plans to use a hub-and-spoke topology with AWS Transit Gateway. The network team wants to ensure high availability for the connection between the hub VPC and the on-premises data center using AWS Direct Connect with multiple virtual interfaces (VIFs). They need to be able to fail over quickly with minimal packet loss. Which design should meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Provision two Direct Connect connections, each with multiple private VIFs, and attach them to the same transit gateway. Use BFD to detect failures and rely on ECMP routing across the VIFs.. Option C is correct because it provides true high availability and fast failover by using two separate Direct Connect connections, each with multiple private VIFs, attached to the same transit gateway. BFD (Bidirectional Forwarding Detection) enables sub-second failure detection, and ECMP (Equal-Cost Multi-Path) routing across the VIFs allows active-active load balancing, minimizing packet loss during failover. This design eliminates single points of failure and meets the requirement for rapid convergence with minimal disruption.

Answer

Provision one Direct Connect connection with a single private VIF, and enable BFD on the VIF to detect failures quickly.

Answer

Provision one Direct Connect connection with two private VIFs, and use a second Direct Connect connection as backup with a single VIF. Configure route tables to prefer the primary.

Answer

Provision two Direct Connect connections, each with a single private VIF, and use AWS Site-to-Site VPN as a backup for each.

Question 10

A company has deployed a web application in a VPC with public subnets for the web servers and private subnets for the database servers. The web servers need to access the internet for software updates. The network engineer configured a NAT Gateway in the public subnet and added a route in the private subnet route table pointing 0.0.0.0/0 to the NAT Gateway. However, the web servers cannot reach the internet. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The web servers are in a public subnet, but the route table for the public subnet points 0.0.0.0/0 to the NAT Gateway instead of the Internet Gateway.. Option C is correct because the web servers are deployed in a public subnet, which requires a route table entry pointing 0.0.0.0/0 to an Internet Gateway (IGW) for direct internet access. Instead, the engineer configured the route to point to a NAT Gateway, which is intended for private subnets. A public subnet must have a direct IGW route; using a NAT Gateway in a public subnet breaks outbound connectivity because the NAT Gateway itself relies on the IGW for internet access, but the web servers' traffic is sent to the NAT Gateway instead of the IGW, causing a routing loop or failure.

Answer

The private subnet route table does not have a route to the NAT Gateway for 0.0.0.0/0.

Answer

The security group of the web servers is blocking outbound traffic to the internet.

Answer

The NAT Gateway does not have a route to the Internet Gateway in its route table.

Question 11

A company uses AWS Client VPN to provide remote access to its VPC resources. Users report that they can connect to the VPN but cannot reach any resources in the VPC. The VPN endpoint is associated with a subnet in VPC A. The VPC's route table has a route for the Client VPN CIDR (10.200.0.0/16) pointing to the VPN endpoint. The security group assigned to the VPN endpoint allows inbound traffic from the VPN clients. What is the most likely cause of the issue?

Accepted Answer

The security group associated with the VPN endpoint does not allow inbound traffic from the VPN client CIDR.. The most likely cause is that the security group associated with the VPN endpoint does not allow inbound traffic from the VPN client CIDR (10.200.0.0/16). Even though users can connect to the VPN, the security group acts as a virtual firewall for the endpoint; without an inbound rule permitting traffic from the client CIDR, packets from clients are dropped before they can be routed to VPC resources. The question states that the security group allows inbound traffic from 'the VPN clients' but not specifically from the client CIDR range, which is a common misconfiguration.

Answer

The Client VPN endpoint's authentication is failing.

Answer

The VPN endpoint is not associated with the correct subnet.

Answer

The route table in VPC A does not have a route for the Client VPN CIDR.

Question 12

A company is using an AWS Transit Gateway to connect multiple VPCs and on-premises networks via Direct Connect. The network team notices that traffic from an on-premises network (CIDR 172.16.0.0/12) to a VPC (CIDR 10.0.0.0/16) is being dropped. The transit gateway route table shows a static route for 10.0.0.0/16 pointing to the VPC attachment. The Direct Connect virtual interface (VIF) is associated with the transit gateway and the on-premises router is advertising 172.16.0.0/12 via BGP. What is the most likely cause of the traffic being dropped?

Accepted Answer

The transit gateway route table does not have a route for the on-premises CIDR (172.16.0.0/12) pointing to the Direct Connect attachment.. The transit gateway route table must contain a route for the on-premises CIDR (172.16.0.0/12) pointing to the Direct Connect attachment for return traffic to be forwarded correctly. Without this route, the transit gateway has no path for traffic destined to the on-premises network, causing it to be dropped. The static route for 10.0.0.0/16 only handles traffic toward the VPC, not the return direction.

Answer

The VPC has a route that points to the transit gateway for the on-premises CIDR, causing asymmetric routing.

Answer

The Direct Connect VIF is not configured with BFD.

Answer

The VPC route table does not have a route for the on-premises CIDR pointing to the transit gateway.

Question 13

A company uses AWS Direct Connect to connect its on-premises data center to a VPC. The network team needs to monitor the Direct Connect connection for performance issues and receive alerts when latency exceeds a certain threshold. Which TWO actions should the team take to meet these requirements? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Create a CloudWatch alarm on the Direct Connect latency metric to send notifications when latency exceeds the threshold.. Option A is correct because AWS Direct Connect provides a built-in 'Latency' metric in CloudWatch that measures the round-trip time between the Direct Connect location and the AWS region. By creating a CloudWatch alarm on this metric, the team can trigger an SNS notification when latency exceeds a defined threshold, enabling proactive monitoring of performance issues.

Answer

Subscribe to AWS Health Dashboard events for Direct Connect.

Answer

Enable VPC Flow Logs to capture traffic patterns and latency.

Answer

Configure a VPN CloudWatch metric to monitor the Direct Connect connection.

Question 14

A company is using AWS Transit Gateway to connect multiple VPCs and on-premises networks. The network team observes that traffic between two VPCs (VPC A and VPC B) is not being forwarded correctly. The transit gateway route table is configured with static routes for the VPC CIDRs. Which THREE steps should the engineer take to troubleshoot this issue? (Choose THREE.)

Accepted Answer

Verify that the transit gateway route table contains the CIDR blocks of both VPCs.. Option A is correct because the transit gateway route table must contain the CIDR blocks of both VPCs for traffic to be forwarded between them. Without these static routes, the transit gateway has no destination to route the traffic, causing it to be dropped. Verifying the route table entries ensures the necessary paths exist.

Answer

Check the Direct Connect virtual interface status.

Answer

Verify that the NAT Gateway in each VPC is properly configured.

Question 15

Refer to the exhibit. A network engineer is analyzing VPC Flow Logs to troubleshoot connectivity issues. The engineer notices that traffic from 10.0.1.5 to 192.168.1.1 on port 80 is logged as ACCEPT, but the application team reports that the web request failed. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The destination host 192.168.1.1 is not reachable or does not have a route back to the source.. The VPC Flow Logs record the state of the TCP handshake from the perspective of the network path, but they do not confirm that the destination host successfully processed the request or that a return path exists. If 192.168.1.1 has no route back to 10.0.1.5, the initial SYN-ACK will never reach the source, causing the application to time out even though the forward traffic was accepted by the network ACL and security group.

Answer

The VPC Flow Logs are not capturing all packets due to sampling.

Answer

The network ACL is returning an ICMP unreachable message that is not logged.

Answer

The security group on the ENI is blocking outbound traffic to 192.168.1.1.

Question 16

A company is experiencing intermittent connectivity issues between two VPCs connected via a VPC peering connection. The VPCs are in different AWS regions. VPC A has CIDR 10.0.0.0/16 and VPC B has CIDR 10.1.0.0/16. The route tables in both VPCs have been updated to include routes pointing to the peering connection. Security groups and network ACLs are configured to allow all traffic for testing. However, traffic from VPC A to VPC B fails intermittently. Which of the following is the most likely cause of this intermittent failure?

Accepted Answer

The VPC peering connection does not support transitive routing. If any traffic is being routed through an intermediate device (e.g., a NAT instance or a VPN connection), the peering connection will not forward that traffic.. The intermittent failure is most likely due to VPC peering's lack of transitive routing. If traffic from VPC A to VPC B is routed through an intermediate device (e.g., a NAT instance, VPN connection, or another VPC), the VPC peering connection will not forward that traffic because it does not support transitive routing. This can cause intermittent failures when the intermediate device's route or state changes, even though direct routes and security groups are correctly configured.

Answer

The security group rules in VPC A are not allowing inbound traffic from VPC B's CIDR. The security group must reference the VPC B CIDR explicitly.

Answer

The route tables in both VPCs must include explicit routes for each other's CIDR blocks, but they should also include routes to the internet gateway for proper routing.

Answer

The VPCs are in different regions, and cross-region VPC peering is not supported. A transit gateway must be used instead.

Question 17

A network engineer is troubleshooting a Site-to-Site VPN connection between an on-premises network and AWS. The VPN tunnel is up, but traffic is not flowing from the on-premises network to a VPC. The VPC has a virtual private gateway attached, and the route table has a route pointing to the virtual private gateway for the on-premises CIDR (192.168.0.0/16). The on-premises firewall shows that traffic is being sent to the VPN tunnel. What should the engineer check next?

Accepted Answer

Verify that the on-premises route table has a route to the VPC CIDR via the VPN tunnel.. Since the VPN tunnel is up and the on-premises firewall confirms traffic is being sent to the tunnel, the issue is likely on the on-premises routing side. For traffic to flow from on-premises to the VPC, the on-premises router must have a route pointing to the VPC CIDR via the VPN tunnel interface. Without this route, packets will not be forwarded into the tunnel, even though the tunnel itself is operational.

Answer

Verify that the virtual private gateway is attached to the VPC.

Answer

Verify that the on-premises firewall is not blocking UDP port 500 for IKE.

Answer

Verify that the VPN tunnel's pre-shared key matches on both sides.

Question 18

A company is using AWS Direct Connect with a private VIF to access their VPC. Users report intermittent connectivity issues. You check the Direct Connect console and see that the virtual interface state is 'down'. What is the MOST likely cause?

Accepted Answer

BGP session between the customer router and AWS is down.. A private VIF relies on a BGP session between the customer router and the AWS Direct Connect router to exchange routes and maintain the virtual interface state. When the BGP session goes down, the VIF state transitions to 'down' because no routing information is being exchanged, causing connectivity loss. This is the most direct and common cause of a VIF being in the 'down' state.

Answer

AWS Site-to-Site VPN is not established.

Answer

MACsec encryption is misconfigured on the customer router.

Answer

Jumbo frames are enabled on the VIF but not supported by the customer router.

Question 19

A network engineer is troubleshooting high latency on an AWS Transit Gateway that connects multiple VPCs and an on-premises network via AWS Site-to-Site VPN. The engineer wants to identify potential causes. Which TWO actions should the engineer take? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Review the CloudWatch metrics for the VPN tunnels for packet loss and latency.. Option B is correct because CloudWatch metrics for VPN tunnels provide direct visibility into packet loss and latency, which are key indicators of performance issues on the AWS Site-to-Site VPN component of the Transit Gateway. Option C is correct because Transit Gateway Flow Logs capture IP traffic information between attachments, allowing the engineer to analyze traffic patterns, identify drops, and pinpoint which VPC or VPN attachment is contributing to the high latency.

Answer

Review the NACL rules for each subnet in the VPCs.

Answer

Re-create the VPN connections to reset the tunnels.

Answer

Enable VPC Flow Logs on the VPCs attached to the transit gateway.

Question 20

Arrange the steps to configure a site-to-site VPN connection between an AWS Virtual Private Gateway and an on-premises Cisco ASA in the correct order.