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350-501 · topic practice

Troubleshooting practice questions

Practise Cisco SPCOR / CCNP Service Provider Core 350-501 Troubleshooting practice questions — original exam-style scenarios with answer choices, explanations, and analysis of common mistakes.

Courseiva uses original exam-style practice questions designed for learning and revision. The goal is to understand the concepts, recognise exam patterns, and improve through explanations — not memorise copied exam dumps.

Reviewed byJohnson Ajibi· MSc IT Security
20 questionsDomain: Troubleshooting

What the exam tests

What to know about Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting questions test whether you can apply the concept in context, not just recognise a definition.

How the topic appears in realistic exam-style scenarios.

Which detail in the question changes the correct answer.

How to eliminate plausible but wrong options.

How to connect the question back to the wider exam objective.

Watch out for

Common Troubleshooting exam traps

  • Answering from memory before reading the full scenario.
  • Missing a constraint such as cost, availability, security, scope or command context.
  • Choosing a broad answer when the question asks for the most specific fix.
  • Ignoring why the wrong options are tempting.

Practice set

Troubleshooting questions

20 questions · select your answer, then reveal the explanation

Question 1easymultiple choice
Review the full OSPF breakdown →

A network engineer is troubleshooting an OSPF adjacency failure between two directly connected routers, R1 and R2. Both routers are configured with the same OSPF process ID and area. The engineer verifies that the interfaces are up and IP connectivity exists. Which configuration mismatch is most likely causing the adjacency to fail?

Question 2mediummultiple choice
Study the full QoS explanation →

A network engineer is troubleshooting QoS in a service provider environment. Customer traffic is marked with DSCP AF31 (011010) at the CE. On the PE router, the policy maps trust DSCP and sets the CoS to 4. However, core routers remark the DSCP to 0. What is the most likely cause?

Question 3hardmultiple choice
Read the full MPLS explanation →

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?

Question 4hardmultiple choice
Read the full MPLS explanation →

An engineer is troubleshooting MPLS LSP connectivity. The ingress PE router has the label binding for the FEC 10.1.1.0/24, but no LSP is established. Which command should be checked on the P routers to verify the LSP path?

Question 5mediummulti select
Read the full MPLS explanation →

An engineer is troubleshooting an MPLS network where some routers are not exchanging labels via LDP. Which two steps are most appropriate for diagnosing the issue? (Choose two.)

Question 6mediummultiple choice
Review the full routing breakdown →

An SP engineer is troubleshooting IS-IS routing. The network uses wide metrics, and some links have been configured with TE metrics. Which statement correctly describes the relationship between TE metrics and narrow metrics in IS-IS?

Question 7mediummulti select
Read the full MPLS explanation →

An engineer is troubleshooting an MPLS-TE tunnel that is not coming up. The configuration includes an explicit path with strict hops. Which TWO conditions could prevent the tunnel from being established? (Choose two.)

Question 8easymulti select
Study the full QoS explanation →

During QoS troubleshooting, you capture traffic and see that DSCP markings are not being applied as configured. Which two common misconfigurations could cause this? (Choose two.)

Question 9hardmultiple choice
Study the full QoS explanation →

While troubleshooting a customer complaint about slow data transfers, you notice that traffic from a specific site is being dropped. The QoS policy on the PE router includes a police command for the customer's traffic. The observed drop rate is exactly half of the configured police rate. What is the most probable reason?

Question 10hardmultiple choice
Open the full BGP breakdown →

An engineer is troubleshooting a BGP route reflector setup. Clients are not receiving all routes. The 'show bgp neighbors' output shows a state of 'Active'. What is the most likely cause?

Question 11hardmultiple choice
Open the full BGP breakdown →

An engineer is troubleshooting an MPLS VPN issue where CE1 cannot ping CE2 across the provider network. The PE routers are configured with MP-BGP and LDP. On PE1, 'show ip bgp vpnv4 vrf CUST' shows the route to CE2's loopback as valid, but 'show mpls forwarding-table' does not list a label for that prefix. What is the most likely cause?

Question 12mediummultiple choice
Open the full BGP breakdown →

A service provider is troubleshooting BGP route selection for prefixes received from two different peers. The first peer prepends its AS path twice, making it longer than the second peer's path. However, the router still prefers the route with the longer AS path. Which additional attribute could cause this behavior?

Question 13mediummultiple choice
Read the full MPLS explanation →

An engineer is troubleshooting MPLS label switching in a service provider core. They notice that packets are being forwarded correctly between provider edge routers, but when they check the MPLS forwarding table on a P router, they see only implicit-null labels for some destinations. What is the most likely reason for this?

Question 14mediummultiple choice
Read the full MPLS explanation →

A network engineer is troubleshooting MPLS L3VPN issues on a PE router. The CE router is receiving routes from the PE, but the CE cannot ping the remote CE. The PE shows the remote prefix in its routing table and in the VRF. What is the most likely cause?

Question 15easymultiple choice
Review the full OSPF breakdown →

A network engineer is troubleshooting an OSPF issue in a service provider network. The network uses OSPFv2 with multiple areas. Routers in area 0 are able to ping each other, but routers in area 1 cannot reach routers in area 2. All routers are OSPF-enabled and have correct network type configurations. What is the most likely cause?

Question 16mediummultiple choice
Open the full BGP breakdown →

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?

Question 17hardmultiple choice
Open the full BGP breakdown →

An engineer is troubleshooting BGP convergence. The router has multiple paths for a prefix, but it selects a path with a lower local preference over a path with a higher local preference. The higher local preference path is from an EBGP peer. What could cause this?

Question 18hardmultiple choice
Review the full OSPF breakdown →

A network engineer is troubleshooting OSPFv3 on a service provider's IPv6 network. The router shows that OSPFv3 adjacency never reaches FULL, says 'Init'. The neighbor is directly connected over a point-to-point link. What is the most likely cause?

Question 19easymulti select
Read the full MPLS explanation →

Which two MPLS OAM tools can be used to troubleshoot label switching paths? (Choose two)

Question 20mediummultiple choice
Open the full BGP breakdown →

A network engineer is troubleshooting slow BGP convergence after a link failure in an MPLS core. Which feature can be enabled on the PE routers to fast-failover traffic upon BGP next-hop unreachability?

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Frequently asked questions

What does the 350-501 exam test about Troubleshooting?
Troubleshooting questions test whether you can apply the concept in context, not just recognise a definition.
How should I use these practice questions?
Select your answer before revealing the explanation. Then read why each option is right or wrong — this active recall approach builds retention far faster than re-reading notes.
Can I practise just Troubleshooting questions in a focused session?
Yes — the session launcher on this page draws every question from the Troubleshooting domain. Use a 10-question session first to gauge your baseline, then move to 20 or 30 once the weak spots are clear.
Where can I practise other 350-501 topics?
Use the topic links above to move to related areas, or go back to the 350-501 question bank to see all topics.
Are these real exam questions or dumps?
These are original practice questions written to test the same concepts the 350-501 exam covers. They are not copied from any real exam or dump site.