PCNE Anycast IP Practice Question
An organization runs a stateful TCP application on a group of Compute Engine instances in us-central1. Clients must connect to the service using a single anycast IP address, and the load balancer must preserve the client source IP address. Which load balancing option meets these requirements?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often select the External TCP/UDP Network Load Balancer because it preserves client IP natively, but it is a regional load balancer and does not provide a single anycast IP. The Global external TCP Proxy provides anycast IP and can preserve client IP via Proxy Protocol.
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
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Global external TCP Proxy Load Balancer
The Global external TCP Proxy Load Balancer provides a single anycast IP address that clients can connect to from anywhere. While it terminates the TCP connection, it can be configured to forward the client's IP address to the backend using Proxy Protocol (e.g., HAProxy protocol). This allows the backend to see the original client source IP, meeting the requirement for a stateful TCP application. The other options either do not provide anycast IP or cannot preserve the source IP.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
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External TCP/UDP Network Load Balancer
Why it's wrong here
The External TCP/UDP Network Load Balancer is a regional, passthrough load balancer that preserves the client IP, but it does not provide a single anycast IP address. It uses a regional IP, not anycast.
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Internal TCP/UDP Load Balancer
Why it's wrong here
The Internal TCP/UDP Load Balancer is for internal traffic only and does not provide an external IP or anycast capability.
- ✓
Global external TCP Proxy Load Balancer
Why this is correct
The Global external TCP Proxy Load Balancer provides a single anycast IP address and can preserve the client IP address using Proxy Protocol, making it suitable for stateful TCP applications that require both anycast and source IP preservation.
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Global external HTTP(S) Load Balancer
Why it's wrong here
The Global external HTTP(S) Load Balancer is designed for HTTP/HTTPS traffic and does not support TCP/UDP protocols directly; it also terminates connections and does not preserve the client IP.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PCNE practice question is part of Courseiva's free Google Cloud 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 PCNE exam.