ICA Advanced Scenarios Practice Question
You are configuring Jaeger for distributed tracing in Istio. You observe that traces are missing spans for external service calls. What is the most likely cause?
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
✓
The application is not propagating the trace headers.
Tracing relies on the propagation of B3 or W3C Trace Context headers. If external services do not support this, the trace chain is broken.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
The Jaeger collector is not configured in istio-system.
Why it's wrong here
If the collector were missing, no traces would be visible at all.
- ✗
The sidecar is not configured for egress.
Why it's wrong here
Egress configurations handle routing, not the injection of tracing headers.
- ✗
The MeshConfig 'sampling' value is too low.
Why it's wrong here
Low sampling reduces the number of traces, but does not break the span chain for recorded traces.
- ✓
The application is not propagating the trace headers.
Why this is correct
Istio-sidecars cannot magically maintain trace contexts across opaque network boundaries without application-level header propagation.
About these practice questions
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed August 2026 · checked against the official CNCF / Linux Foundation exam blueprint
This ICA practice question is part of Courseiva's free CNCF / Linux Foundation 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 ICA exam.