Practice for the CCNA exam with 22 exam-style practice questions, instant answer reveals, and concise explanations of every correct answer. Topics include: What software-defined architecture plane assists network devices with making packet-forwarding decisions by providing La. Follow @CertPunch and visit certpunch.com for more certification practice exams and study content.
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What you will practice
- What software-defined architecture plane assists network devices with making packet-forwarding decisions by p…
- What is a characteristic of an SSID in wireless networks?
- Which WAN topology has the highest degree of reliability?
- Which command must be entered when a device is configured as an NTP server?
- Which technology must be implemented to configure network device monitoring with the highest security?
- Which command is used to display the collection of OSPF link states?
Answers and explanations
Tap a question to expand the answer and the exam reasoning. Try to commit to your own pick first.
Q1. What software-defined architecture plane assists network devices with making packet-forwarding decisions by providing Layer 2 reachability and Layer 3 routing information?
Answer: B. B. control plane
The control plane builds the routing and MAC tables that feed the data plane. Avoid choosing the data plane, because it only forwards traffic based on those precomputed tables.
Q2. What is a characteristic of an SSID in wireless networks?
Answer: B. B. identifies a wireless network
A service set identifier is the logical name assigned to a wireless LAN. This name allows client devices to identify and select the correct network for association.
Q3. Which WAN topology has the highest degree of reliability?
Answer: C. C. full mesh
A full mesh topology provides multiple redundant paths between all sites by directly connecting every node. This ensures maximum reliability because traffic can immediately reroute if a single link fails.
Q4. Which command must be entered when a device is configured as an NTP server?
Answer: B. B. ntp master
The NTP master command configures a device to act as an authoritative NTP server. This allows it to provide time synchronization to other network clients even without an external clock source.
Q5. Which technology must be implemented to configure network device monitoring with the highest security?
Answer: D. D. SNMPv3
Simple Network Management Protocol version three provides authentication and encryption features. This offers the highest security for device monitoring by protecting the confidentiality and integrity of management traffic.
Q6. Which command is used to display the collection of OSPF link states?
Answer: D. D. show ip ospf database
The show ip ospf database command displays the OSPF link-state database. This proves the correct answer because it lists all link-state advertisements known to the router.
Q7. An engineer verifies that an OSPF neighbor is acting as the designated router on a broadcast network. Which OSPF neighbor state confirms that a full adjacency has been formed with that router?
Answer: D. D. Full
The Full state confirms that OSPF routers have fully synchronized their link-state databases. The 2-way state only indicates neighbor discovery and is used between non-designated routers.
Q8. What happens when a switch receives a frame with a destination MAC address that recently aged out?
Answer: B. B. The switch floods the frame to all ports in the VLAN except the port that received the frame.
When a destination MAC address ages out of the CAM table, the switch loses the forwarding entry and treats the frame as unknown unicast. It floods the frame to all ports within the same VLAN except the ingress port.
Q9. What is the difference between AAA authentication and authorization?
Answer: A. A. Authentication identifies and verifies a user who is attempting to access a system, and authorization controls the tasks the user performs.
Authentication proves identity, while authorization defines permitted actions for verified users. Incorrect options confuse accounting with authorization or mix password validation tasks incorrectly.
Q10. What is the role of the root port in a switched network?
Answer: C. C. It is the best path to the root from a nonroot switch.
In spanning tree protocol, the root port on a nonroot switch provides the lowest cost path to the root bridge. The root port is actively forwarding, which eliminates failover or disabled options.
Q11. A user configured OSPF in a single area between two routers. A serial interface connecting R1 and R2 is running encapsulation PPP. By default, which OSPF network type is seen on this interface when the user types show ip ospf interface on…
Answer: B. B. point-to-point
OSPF defaults to the point-to-point network type on serial interfaces using PPP encapsulation. This network type skips the DR and BDR election process, which eliminates the broadcast and nonbroadcast options.
Q12. When a switch receives a frame from an unknown source MAC address, which action does the switch take with the frame?
Answer: C. C. It associates the source MAC address with the LAN port on which it was received and saves it to the MAC address table.
Switches dynamically learn MAC addresses by examining incoming frames. The switch records the source MAC address and ingress port in the MAC address table, allowing future frames destined for that address to be forwarded.
Q13. Which command is used to enable LLDP globally on a Cisco IOS ISR?
Answer: A. A. lldp run
The command lldp run is entered in global configuration mode to enable Link Layer Discovery Protocol globally on a Cisco device. The other commands either apply to CDP or are used for specific interface-level configurations.
Q14. Which command must be entered to configure a DHCP relay?
Answer: D. D. ip helper-address
The ip helper-address command is configured on a router interface to forward local DHCP broadcast messages to a remote server. The ip dhcp pool command creates a local server, while the other options do not provide relay functionality.
Q15. Which attribute does a router use to select the best path when two or more different routes to the same destination exist from two different routing protocols?
Answer: C. C. administrative distance
A router uses administrative distance to select the best path when multiple routing protocols advertise the same destination. The metric only breaks ties within the same routing protocol, not across different sources.
Q16. What is a benefit of using a Cisco Wireless LAN Controller?
Answer: A. A. It eliminates the need to configure each access point individually.
A wireless LAN controller eliminates the need to configure each lightweight access point individually by providing centralized management. The controller does not manage autonomous access points in this architecture.
Q17. Which MAC address is recognized as a VRRP virtual address?
Answer: A. A. 0000.5E00.010a
Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol uses a standardized MAC address prefix of 0000.5E00.01, with the last byte representing the group number. Option A matches this pattern exactly, while the others belong to HSRP or other protocols.
Q18. R1 has learned route 10.10.10.0/24 via numerous routing protocols. Which route is installed?
Answer: C. C. route with the lowest administrative distance
When a router learns the exact same network from multiple routing protocols, it selects the route with the lowest administrative distance. Metrics like cost or hop count only compare paths learned from a single routing protocol.
Q19. When deploying syslog, which severity level logs informational messages?
Answer: D. D. 6
Syslog severity level six corresponds to informational messages, which provide routine operational data about the system. Lower levels like zero or two represent much more critical emergencies and warnings.
Q20. In which way does a spine-and-leaf architecture allow for scalability in a network when additional access ports are required?
Answer: C. C. A leaf switch can be added with connections to every spine switch.
A spine-and-leaf architecture scales horizontally by adding a leaf switch that connects to every spine switch. This maintains consistent latency and equal-cost multipath routing while avoiding the bottleneck of adding spines.
Q21. Which networking function occurs on the data plane?
Answer: D. D. forwarding remote client/server traffic
The data plane is responsible for forwarding actual user traffic between interfaces based on routing and MAC tables. Control plane processes like SSH, OSPF hellos, and spanning-tree elections manage the router state.
Q22. What provides centralized control of authentication and roaming in an enterprise network?
Answer: B. B. a wireless LAN controller
A wireless LAN controller provides centralized management of authentication, security policies, and client roaming across multiple lightweight access points. Lightweight APs handle the radio frequency but rely on the controller.
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