A network engineer is troubleshooting a router that is not responding to ICMP echo requests from a management station at 10.10.10.1. The router has an ACL applied to the VTY lines that permits only 10.10.10.0/24. The engineer can telnet to the router from the management station. What is the most likely cause?
Since Telnet works, the VTY ACL is not the issue; an interface ACL blocking ICMP is the likely cause.
Why this answer
The management station can telnet to the router, which proves that the VTY ACL permits 10.10.10.0/24 and that reachability exists. Since ICMP is processed by the interface input path before any VTY ACL, the failure of ICMP echo requests points to an inbound ACL on the interface that explicitly denies ICMP from 10.10.10.1. This is the most likely cause because telnet (TCP/23) succeeds while ICMP fails, isolating the issue to interface-level filtering.
How to eliminate wrong answers
Option A is wrong because VTY ACLs apply only to inbound Telnet/SSH sessions (TCP/23, TCP/22) and do not affect ICMP traffic, which is handled at the interface level. Option C is wrong because there is no global command 'no ip icmp echo' in Cisco IOS; the correct command to disable ICMP echo responses is 'no ip icmp echo-reply' or 'no ip unreachables', but even then, the router would still respond to echo requests unless explicitly blocked, and this scenario is less common than an ACL. Option D is wrong because the management station is reachable (telnet succeeds), which confirms the router has a route back to 10.10.10.1; otherwise, the TCP handshake would fail.