200-901 Infrastructure and Automation Practice Question
A developer is building an automation workflow that must react when an interface on a Cisco IOS XE device goes down. The workflow should subscribe to the device and receive structured event data as changes happen, rather than polling for state. Which technology should the developer use?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is treating any programmatic interface as equivalent, when only a subscription-based push mechanism satisfies an event-driven requirement.
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
✓
NETCONF event notifications over an SSH session
Event-driven reaction requires a push mechanism. NETCONF event notifications let a client subscribe to a stream and receive XML events from the device as state changes occur, eliminating polling latency and unstructured parsing. SNMP polling, RESTCONF GETs, and scheduled CLI commands are all pull-based and return either delayed or unstructured data, so none deliver the required asynchronous, structured event stream.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
SNMP polling with the IF-MIB ifOperStatus object on a fixed interval
Why it's wrong here
Polling ifOperStatus at intervals is pull-based, so the workflow only learns about a down interface at the next poll and may miss brief flaps entirely. The scenario explicitly asks for push-style, event-driven reception of structured data, which periodic SNMP polling does not provide.
- ✗
SSH into the device and run show interfaces on a scheduled cron job
Why it's wrong here
Scheduled CLI scraping is polling by another name and returns unstructured text that must be parsed, which is fragile and laggy. The device does not push output when an interface transitions, so the workflow would react late and could easily misparse formatting changes across IOS XE versions.
- ✓
NETCONF event notifications over an SSH session
Why this is correct
NETCONF's notification capability lets a client create a subscription to streams such as NETCONF or syslog, and the device pushes XML-encoded event data as changes occur. That matches the requirement to receive structured, event-driven updates instead of repeatedly polling the device for interface state.
- ✗
RESTCONF GET requests against the ietf-interfaces YANG model
Why it's wrong here
RESTCONF is a request-response protocol over HTTP; a GET returns the current state but does not push asynchronous events. Using it here would require the developer to poll repeatedly, which is exactly the behavior the workflow is trying to avoid, so it does not satisfy the event-driven requirement.
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Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Cisco exam blueprint
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