PCNSE Manage, Monitor and Operate Practice Question
A firewall is configured with two ISPs for redundancy. The administrator wants to ensure that traffic from internal users is load-balanced across both links based on source IP. Which configuration method should be used?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse Policy-Based Forwarding (PBF) with load balancing, but PBF is for policy-based routing decisions, not for distributing traffic across equal-cost paths based on source IP hash.
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
✓
ECMP with source IP hash
D is correct because ECMP (Equal-Cost Multi-Path) with source IP hash enables the firewall to load-balance traffic across multiple equal-cost routes by hashing the source IP address, ensuring that all packets from the same source IP consistently use the same link. This method provides per-source-IP stickiness while distributing traffic across both ISPs, meeting the requirement for load balancing based on 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.
- ✗
Static routes with different metrics
Why it's wrong here
Different metrics provide failover, not load balancing.
- ✗
Policy-Based Forwarding (PBF)
Why it's wrong here
PBF is used for traffic steering, not load balancing.
- ✗
Path monitoring
Why it's wrong here
Path monitoring checks path availability, not load balancing.
- ✓
ECMP with source IP hash
Why this is correct
ECMP with source IP hash load-balances traffic across equal-cost paths.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
One of 504 original PCNSE practice questions on Courseiva, each with a full explanation and wrong-answer analysis — not exam dumps or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PCNSE practice question is part of Courseiva's free Palo Alto Networks 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 PCNSE exam.