These are the questions most candidates get wrong. They require connecting multiple concepts, reading tricky output, or knowing edge-case behaviour that isn't on most study cards. Practising them trains you to operate under uncertainty — a necessary skill on the real exam.
Start Scenario PracticeA service provider is implementing 6VPE to provide IPv6 L3VPN services. Which two statements about 6VPE are true?
Explanation: 6VPE uses MP-BGP extensions with AFI 2 (IPv6) and SAFI 128 (MPLS-labeled VPN address family) to exchange VPN-IPv6 routes. It supports overlapping IPv6 address spaces between different VPNs by using route distinguishers. PE routers do not require IPv6 connectivity to the MPLS core; the core can be IPv4-only with MPLS. 6VPE does not require a full IPv6 routing table on the PE, and it uses MPLS encapsulation, not GRE.
In a hierarchical QoS policy applied to a subscriber aggregation interface, the parent policy shapes to 100 Mbps and the child policy allocates 50% bandwidth to voice and 50% to data. If voice traffic exceeds 50 Mbps, what happens to the excess?
Explanation: The child policy's police command within LLQ drops or re-marks voice traffic exceeding the configured bandwidth to prevent starvation of other queues.
An SP is troubleshooting an MPLS L2VPN VPLS network where MAC flapping is occurring between two PEs. Which mechanism in VPLS prevents loops and ensures that a broadcast frame from one PE is not reflected back to the originating PE?
Explanation: In a VPLS environment, split horizon is the mechanism that prevents loops by ensuring that a broadcast, multicast, or unknown unicast frame received from a pseudowire (PW) is never forwarded back to any other PW on the same PE. This rule, defined in RFC 4761 and RFC 4762, stops the originating PE from receiving its own reflected frames, thus eliminating the MAC flapping that would occur if the frame were looped through the MPLS core.
An engineer configures an SR-TE policy with a segment list containing adjacency SIDs. The required path includes a strict loose hop through a specific router. Which segment type should be used for the strict hop?
Explanation: Adjacency SIDs force the packet to traverse a specific link. For a strict hop, the adjacency SID ensures the packet goes through that exact link. A Node SID would allow any path to the node.
Refer to the exhibit. Which statement about this BGP configuration is true?
Explanation: The `next-hop-self` command under the VRF address-family instructs the PE router to set its own IP address as the next-hop for routes advertised to the route reflector. This is necessary in MPLS L3VPN environments to ensure that the route reflector (and other PEs) can reach the customer prefix via the advertising PE, avoiding reachability issues when the original next-hop is not directly connected across the MPLS core.
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Practice all Hard Difficulty QuestionsThese are the questions most candidates get wrong. They require connecting multiple concepts, reading tricky output, or knowing edge-case behaviour that isn't on most study cards. Practising them trains you to operate under uncertainty — a necessary skill on the real exam. These appear throughout the 350-501 and require you to apply your knowledge, not just recall facts.
Cisco doesn't publish an exact breakdown, but scenario-based questions (especially exhibit and command-output formats) make up a significant portion of the 350-501. Practicing each scenario type ensures you're ready for any format.
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