350-501 Networking Practice Question
An engineer is troubleshooting a BGP peering issue between two routers. The peering is established, but routes are not being exchanged. On router R1, 'show bgp neighbors 192.0.2.2' shows the neighbor state as 'Established' but the 'Prefixes received' counter is zero. What is most likely the cause?
⚠ Common exam trap
Cisco often tests the distinction between session state and route exchange; the trap here is that candidates assume an Established session guarantees route exchange, overlooking outbound filtering on the neighbor side.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
An outbound route-map on the neighbor is filtering all routes.
The neighbor state is 'Established', confirming that the TCP session and BGP open messages have been successfully exchanged. However, zero prefixes received indicates that R1 is not receiving any routes from the neighbor. An outbound route-map applied on the neighbor (the router sending routes to R1) can filter all prefixes before they are advertised, resulting in zero received prefixes while the session remains up.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
An outbound route-map on the neighbor is filtering all routes.
Why this is correct
An outbound route-map on R2 would filter routes sent to R1, causing zero prefixes received on R1.
- ✗
The 'maximum-prefix' limit is exceeded, causing the session to reset.
Why it's wrong here
The session is Established, so maximum-prefix has not been exceeded.
- ✗
The BGP session is in the Idle state due to a misconfigured update-source.
Why it's wrong here
The output shows the session is Established, so it is not in Idle state.
- ✗
The 'next-hop-self' command is missing on R1.
Why it's wrong here
Next-hop-self affects the next-hop attribute, not the number of prefixes received.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every 350-501 question from scratch — 971 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This 350-501 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Cisco certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the 350-501 exam.