CCNP Practice Exam 2 — 20 Questions

Question 1

A network administrator is deploying Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) and needs to allow two endpoint groups (EPGs) in different bridge domains to communicate while applying a contract that permits only TCP port 443. Which ACI construct provides the policy enforcement point where the contract is applied?

Choose an answer to begin — your selection is scored in the full session.

Accepted Answer

The policy enforcement point on the leaf where the EPGs reside. ACI applies contracts at the leaf switch, which acts as the policy enforcement point for the attached EPGs. The APIC distributes the compiled policy, but the leaf hardware renders and enforces the permit for TCP port 443 between the two EPGs in their respective bridge domains.

Answer

The VXLAN tunnel interface on the spine

Answer

The bridge domain subnet SVI on the border leaf

Answer

The APIC controller cluster policy compiler

Question 2

Drag and drop the steps of ERSPAN (Encapsulated RSPAN) session configuration into the correct order, from first to last.

Accepted Answer

Define ERSPAN source interface(s) and direction. ERSPAN configuration requires first defining the source and destination, then enabling the session. The order ensures the session references exist before activation.

Question 3

A network engineer is configuring a Cisco Catalyst 9000 switch to support a virtual routing and forwarding (VRF) instance for a guest network. The engineer wants to ensure that traffic from the guest VRF cannot leak into the corporate VRF. Which configuration step is required to maintain isolation between VRFs?

Accepted Answer

Place the guest network interfaces into the guest VRF and do not configure any route leaking.. VRFs provide logical separation of routing tables. When you assign interfaces to a VRF, those interfaces use that VRF's routing table. By default, there is no communication between VRFs unless you explicitly configure route leaking, such as static routes with next-hop VRF or BGP route targets. Therefore, placing the guest interfaces in the guest VRF and not configuring any route leaking ensures isolation. Other options either do not enforce isolation or are unnecessary.

Answer

Assign the guest VRF to a separate VLAN and configure inter-VLAN routing.

Answer

Configure a route target export and import policy to control route leaking.

Answer

Enable VRF-aware routing and ensure no static routes point between VRFs.

Question 4

Examine the following IPsec configuration snippet:

crypto ikev2 proposal IKEV2_PROP
 encryption aes-cbc-256
 integrity sha256
 group 14
!
crypto ikev2 policy IKEV2_POL
 proposal IKEV2_PROP
!
crypto ipsec transform-set TSET esp-aes 256 esp-sha256-hmac
 mode tunnel
!
crypto ipsec profile IPSEC_PROF
 set transform-set TSET
 set ikev2-profile IKEV2_POL

Which statement about this configuration is true?

Accepted Answer

The transform set uses ESP with AES-256 encryption and SHA-256 HMAC for authentication.. The transform set explicitly uses 'esp-aes 256' for encryption and 'esp-sha256-hmac' for authentication, which matches the description of ESP with AES-256 encryption and SHA-256 HMAC. The IKEv2 proposal and profile are correctly configured, and the 'mode tunnel' command ensures the transform set operates in tunnel mode, which is appropriate for site-to-site VPNs.

Answer

The IKEv2 proposal uses AES-256, SHA-256, and DH group 14, but the IPsec profile will not apply because the ikev2-profile command is missing the 'set' keyword.

Answer

The transform set is configured in transport mode, which is incorrect for site-to-site VPN.

Answer

The IPsec profile is incomplete because it does not include a PFS (Perfect Forward Secrecy) setting.

Question 5

An organization uses Ansible to manage network device configurations. They have a playbook that uses the ios_command module to execute 'show ip route' on multiple routers and then uses the 'debug' module to print the output. Recently, the playbook started failing with 'Timeout (12s) waiting for privilege escalation prompt'. The routers are reachable and SSH credentials are correct. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The 'ansible_connection' is set to 'network_cli' but the 'ansible_become_method' is not set to 'enable'.. The error 'Timeout (12s) waiting for privilege escalation prompt' indicates that Ansible successfully connected to the routers via SSH but failed to escalate privileges to enable mode. For network devices like Cisco IOS routers, when using the 'network_cli' connection type, the 'ansible_become_method' must be explicitly set to 'enable' to send the 'enable' command and handle the privilege escalation prompt. Without this setting, Ansible does not attempt to enter enable mode, causing the timeout when the module requires higher privileges to execute commands like 'show ip route'.

Answer

The routers are configured with a different enable secret that does not match the one in the Ansible vault.

Answer

The SSH key exchange is taking longer than the default 12-second timeout.

Answer

The ios_command module requires a different privilege level to execute 'show ip route'.

Question 6

Drag and drop each NETCONF operation on the left to its action on the right.

Accepted Answer

get: Retrieve running configuration and state data. Correct pairings: get retrieves running config and state data; get-config retrieves a specific datastore; edit-config modifies configuration; commit confirms a candidate configuration; lock prevents other sessions from modifying a datastore.

Question 7

A network engineer configures IP SLA 20 to monitor the response time of a DNS server at 10.1.1.1 using DNS query for 'example.com'. The operation is used to influence routing decisions. The engineer notices that the IP SLA operation shows 'State: Active' and 'Latest RTT: 50 ms', but the DNS server is actually down and not responding to any queries. What is the most likely reason?

Accepted Answer

The IP SLA DNS probe is using a cached DNS response from the router's DNS resolver, so it does not actually query the server.. IP SLA DNS probes rely on the router's local DNS resolver. If the resolver has a cached response for 'example.com', the probe will return the cached RTT without actually querying the DNS server. This explains why the operation shows 'Active' and a 50 ms RTT even though the DNS server is down.

Answer

The IP SLA DNS probe must be configured with a 'timeout' value lower than 50 ms to detect the failure.

Answer

The DNS server is responding to the probe but not to other queries because the probe uses a different port.

Answer

The IP SLA operation is configured with a 'frequency' that is too low, causing the probe to be sent before the server times out.

Question 8

A company is deploying a new Cisco wireless LAN controller (WLC) and wants to use RADIUS for authenticating wireless users. The WLC is configured with the RADIUS server IP, shared secret, and authentication port 1812. However, users are unable to authenticate. The network engineer checks the RADIUS server logs and sees that the server is receiving authentication requests from the WLC but is responding with an 'Access-Reject' message. The WLC logs show 'RADIUS server not responding' for the same server. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The RADIUS server is configured to use a different source IP address for RADIUS responses than the IP address configured on the WLC, causing the WLC to drop the responses.. The RADIUS server is receiving authentication requests and sending 'Access-Reject' responses, but the WLC logs show 'RADIUS server not responding'. This indicates the WLC is not receiving the responses. The most likely cause is a source IP mismatch: the RADIUS server sends responses from a different IP address than the one configured on the WLC. The WLC drops these responses because they do not match the expected source IP, making it appear as if the server is not responding.

Answer

The WLC is configured with the wrong authentication port; RADIUS uses port 1645, not 1812.

Answer

The WLC's RADIUS server configuration has the wrong shared secret, causing the server to reject requests.

Answer

The WLC is not configured with a valid management interface IP address to reach the RADIUS server.

Question 9

An engineer configures IP SLA 100 to monitor the jitter and latency of a VoIP call path between two branch routers. The configuration uses UDP jitter with a target of 192.168.2.2 on port 16384. The engineer notices that the IP SLA operation shows 'State: Active' but no jitter or latency statistics are collected. The router is generating the probe packets, but the remote router does not respond. What is the most likely reason?

Accepted Answer

The remote router must have an IP SLA responder configured to process the UDP jitter probes.. For UDP jitter IP SLA operations to collect jitter and latency statistics, the remote router must be configured as an IP SLA responder. The responder processes the probe packets and sends back time-stamped responses, which are essential for calculating jitter and one-way delay. Without the responder, the source router can send probes (showing 'Active' state) but cannot compute meaningful statistics because it never receives the required response packets.

Answer

The IP SLA operation must be configured with a 'request-data-size' value to match the remote router's MTU.

Answer

The source router needs a 'frequency' setting that matches the remote router's response interval.

Answer

The firewall on the remote router is blocking the UDP port 16384, preventing the probe from reaching the target.

Question 10

An engineer is configuring RSPAN to monitor traffic from multiple switches in a data center. The monitoring station is connected to a central switch. The engineer has configured an RSPAN VLAN (VLAN 999) on all switches and set up the source sessions on the remote switches. However, the monitoring station receives no traffic. On the central switch, the engineer verifies that the RSPAN VLAN is active and that the destination session is configured. What is a likely missing configuration?

Accepted Answer

The trunk ports between the switches do not have the RSPAN VLAN (999) in their allowed VLAN list.. RSPAN traffic is carried over an RSPAN VLAN that must be allowed on all trunk links between the source switches and the central switch. If the RSPAN VLAN (999) is not included in the allowed VLAN list on the trunk ports, the mirrored frames will be dropped, and the monitoring station will receive no traffic. This is the most likely missing configuration because the engineer verified the VLAN is active and the destination session is set, but did not check the trunk pruning.

Answer

The destination session on the central switch is configured with 'monitor session 2 destination remote vlan 999' instead of 'monitor session 2 destination interface Gi1/0/1'.

Answer

The source sessions on the remote switches are configured with 'monitor session 1 source vlan 100' but the destination is not set to 'remote vlan 999'.

Answer

The RSPAN VLAN is not created as a remote SPAN VLAN; it must be configured with 'remote-span' command.

Question 11

Consider the following SPAN configuration on a Cisco IOS-XE switch:

monitor session 2 source interface GigabitEthernet1/0/3 rx
monitor session 2 destination interface GigabitEthernet1/0/4

What is the effect of this configuration?

Accepted Answer

Only traffic received on GigabitEthernet1/0/3 is copied to GigabitEthernet1/0/4.. The configuration explicitly specifies the `rx` keyword for the source interface, which limits SPAN to copying only received (ingress) traffic on GigabitEthernet1/0/3 to the destination interface GigabitEthernet1/0/4. Without the `rx` or `tx` keyword, the default behavior would copy both directions, but here the explicit `rx` overrides that default.

Answer

Both ingress and egress traffic on GigabitEthernet1/0/3 is copied to GigabitEthernet1/0/4.

Answer

Traffic on GigabitEthernet1/0/4 is mirrored to GigabitEthernet1/0/3.

Answer

The configuration is invalid because the destination interface must be in trunk mode.

Question 12

A network administrator is troubleshooting a BGP routing issue where routes from an eBGP neighbor are not being installed in the routing table. The 'show ip bgp' output shows the routes are received but not valid. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The next-hop IP address is not reachable.. For a BGP route to be considered valid and installed in the routing table, the next-hop IP address must be reachable via an IGP or a static route. If the next hop is not reachable, the route will appear in the 'show ip bgp' output but will be marked as not valid (often with a 'r' for received but not valid). This is the most common cause when routes are received from an eBGP neighbor but not installed.

Answer

The AS-path contains the local AS number.

Answer

BGP synchronization is enabled.

Answer

The maximum-prefix limit has been exceeded.

Question 13

A network engineer is troubleshooting a DHCP issue where a client is not receiving an IP address from a Cisco router configured as a DHCP server. The engineer checks the DHCP pool configuration and sees that the network command is configured with the correct subnet. The engineer also verifies that the ip dhcp excluded-address command is not blocking any addresses. However, the client's DHCP discover message is not reaching the router. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The router's interface is not in the same VLAN as the client, and no ip helper-address is configured.. If the client and the router's DHCP server interface are on different VLANs (i.e., different subnets), the DHCP discover broadcast will not cross the Layer 3 boundary unless the router interface has an ip helper-address configured. The ip helper-address command enables the router to convert the broadcast DHCP discover into a unicast and forward it to the DHCP server. Without it, the client's broadcast never reaches the server, even if the DHCP pool is correctly defined.

Answer

The router's interface is configured with the no ip forward-protocol udp bootps command.

Answer

The DHCP pool is configured with the wrong default-router option.

Answer

The router's DHCP server is disabled globally with the no service dhcp command.

Question 14

A network engineer is configuring a Cisco switch for 802.1X port-based authentication. The switch is configured with a RADIUS server for authentication. The engineer wants to allow devices that fail 802.1X authentication to still access a limited guest VLAN. The engineer configures 'authentication port-control auto' and 'authentication host-mode multi-host' on the interface. However, when a non-802.1X-capable device is connected, the port remains in the unauthorized state and does not fall into the guest VLAN. What is missing?

Accepted Answer

The interface needs the 'authentication guest-vlan ' command to specify the VLAN for non-802.1X devices.. The 'authentication guest-vlan ' command is missing. This command explicitly defines the VLAN to which the port will assign devices that fail 802.1X authentication or are non-802.1X-capable. Without it, the switch has no configured fallback VLAN, so the port remains in the unauthorized state even with 'authentication port-control auto' and 'authentication host-mode multi-host' configured.

Answer

The switch must have 'aaa authentication dot1x default group radius' configured globally.

Answer

The 'authentication host-mode multi-host' command should be replaced with 'authentication host-mode multi-domain' to support guest VLAN.

Answer

The port must be configured as a trunk port to allow the guest VLAN.

Question 15

interface GigabitEthernet0/2
 spanning-tree link-type point-to-point
 end

What is the effect of this configuration?

Accepted Answer

The port will use RSTP fast transition mechanisms assuming a point-to-point link.. The `spanning-tree link-type point-to-point` command manually overrides the port's link type to point-to-point, forcing the port to use Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP) fast transition mechanisms (proposal/agreement handshake) instead of the slower 802.1D listening/learning states. This is correct because RSTP relies on the link type to determine whether it can safely perform a fast transition to the forwarding state; a point-to-point link allows immediate transition without waiting for timers.

Answer

The port will become a designated port immediately.

Answer

The port will disable STP on that link.

Answer

The port will use shared medium behavior.

Question 16

Given the following SNMPv3 configuration on a Cisco IOS-XE router:

snmp-server group ADMIN v3 priv write ADMINVIEW
snmp-server user admin ADMIN v3 auth sha cisco123 priv aes 128 cisco456
snmp-server view ADMINVIEW iso included

What is missing or incorrect in this configuration?

Accepted Answer

The view 'ADMINVIEW' includes the entire ISO tree, which might be too permissive for a restricted write view.. The view 'ADMINVIEW' is configured with 'iso included', which includes the entire ISO OID tree. This grants write access to all MIB objects, which is overly permissive for a restricted write view. In SNMPv3, a write view should be limited to specific OIDs or subtrees to enforce least privilege, and including the entire ISO tree violates that principle. Option D is incorrect because a read view is not required if the group is only intended for write operations. The configuration as shown only specifies a write view, which is sufficient for SNMP set operations. Adding a read view is optional and not a mandatory missing piece.

Answer

The SNMPv3 user 'admin' must also specify an engine ID for the router.

Answer

The privacy password 'cisco456' must be at least 8 characters long.

Answer

The group 'ADMIN' must be configured with a read view to allow SNMP get operations.

Question 17

A network engineer is implementing QoS on a WAN link to prioritize voice traffic. Which queuing mechanism provides the lowest latency for real-time traffic?

Accepted Answer

Low Latency Queuing (LLQ). LLQ is correct because it combines strict priority queuing with CBWFQ, ensuring that voice traffic (marked with EF or CS5) is dequeued before any other traffic class. This strict priority mechanism guarantees the lowest possible latency for real-time traffic, as packets in the priority queue are always transmitted first, regardless of congestion on the WAN link.

Answer

Weighted Random Early Detection (WRED)

Answer

Class-Based Weighted Fair Queuing (CBWFQ)

Answer

First-In, First-Out (FIFO)

Question 18

A network engineer is configuring a PPPoE client on a Cisco router for a DSL connection. The engineer configures the dialer interface with the correct PPPoE profile and authentication credentials. The PPPoE session establishes, but the router cannot ping the ISP's gateway IP address. The engineer checks the routing table and sees that a default route is present via the dialer interface. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The dialer interface does not have an IP address negotiated via IPCP.. In a PPPoE setup, the dialer interface typically obtains its IP address dynamically from the ISP via IPCP (IP Control Protocol) during PPP negotiation. If IPCP fails or is not configured to negotiate an address, the dialer interface remains unnumbered or without a usable IP address. Even though the PPPoE session is established and a default route exists, the router cannot route traffic because it lacks a valid source IP address on the dialer interface to send packets to the ISP's gateway.

Answer

The physical interface is configured with 'no ip address'.

Answer

The default route is pointing to the wrong next-hop IP.

Answer

The ISP's gateway is not responding to ICMP.

Question 19

A network engineer is troubleshooting a Cisco Nexus 9000 switch configured with VXLAN EVPN. The engineer notices that the switch is not advertising EVPN routes for a specific VNI. The NVE interface is up, and the VNI is configured. Which action should the engineer take to verify that the VNI is properly associated with the EVPN control plane?

Accepted Answer

Check the output of 'show bgp l2vpn evpn' to see if the VNI is advertised in the EVPN address family.. To verify that a VNI is properly associated with the EVPN control plane, the engineer should check the BGP EVPN table using 'show bgp l2vpn evpn'. This command displays EVPN routes, including those for the VNI. If the VNI is not advertised, it indicates a configuration issue in the EVPN address family or BGP. Other commands like 'show nve vni' or 'show interface nve1' do not directly show EVPN route advertisement.

Answer

Check the output of 'show vlan id 10' to see if VLAN 10 is active and mapped to the VNI.

Answer

Check the output of 'show interface nve1' to verify that the NVE interface is operational.

Answer

Check the output of 'show nve vni' to see if the VNI is up and associated with the NVE interface.

Question 20

An engineer is configuring QoS on a Cisco ASR 1000 router to support three traffic classes: voice (EF), video (AF41), and data (default). The link is a 50 Mbps Ethernet circuit. The engineer wants to guarantee 10 Mbps for voice, 20 Mbps for video, and the remaining for data. The current policy uses bandwidth percent statements. During congestion, voice traffic is not receiving its guaranteed bandwidth. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The interface bandwidth command is not set to 50000 kbps. The bandwidth percent command allocates a percentage of the interface bandwidth, which by default is derived from the physical interface speed. On a Cisco ASR 1000, if the interface bandwidth is not manually set to 50000 kbps, the router may use a different default value (e.g., 1000000 kbps for Ethernet), causing the bandwidth percent to allocate a much larger absolute amount than intended. This leads to incorrect bandwidth guarantees, such as voice not receiving its required 10 Mbps during congestion.

Answer

The voice class should use priority instead of bandwidth

Answer

The video class should use bandwidth remaining percent

Answer

The policy map is applied in the input direction