350-501 Services Practice Question
Which TWO features are used to improve BGP convergence in an MPLS VPN environment?
⚠ Common exam trap
Cisco often tests the distinction between features that improve convergence speed (BFD, PIC) versus features that affect routing behavior or path selection (next-hop-self, multipath, redistribution), leading candidates to mistakenly select options that are useful but do not directly address convergence time.
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
✓
Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD)
Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) provides sub-second failure detection for BGP sessions, reducing the time to detect a link or neighbor failure from seconds (default BGP keepalive/hold timers) to milliseconds. BGP Prefix Independent Convergence (PIC) pre-installs backup paths in the forwarding table, allowing traffic to be rerouted immediately upon failure without waiting for BGP to reconverge. Together, these features drastically improve BGP convergence in an MPLS VPN environment.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Route redistribution
Why it's wrong here
Redistribution does not affect BGP convergence.
- ✗
Next-hop-self
Why it's wrong here
This is a routing policy command, not convergence feature.
- ✓
Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD)
Why this is correct
BFD quickly detects link failures.
- ✗
BGP multipath
Why it's wrong here
Multipath load-balances, does not converge faster.
- ✓
BGP Prefix Independent Convergence (PIC)
Why this is correct
PIC pre-installs backup paths for fast convergence.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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