CCNP Routing & Switching Interview Questions and Answers

Ques 1. In the below given diagram, R1 (spoke) has a static default traffic pointing towards R2
(HUB). However, the traffic for 10.0.0.0/8 network (from R1 to R2) needs to be discarded on R1
itself. What is the simplest way to perform the same?

On R1, issue the static Route for 10.0.0.0/8 pointing towards Null0 –
Ip route 10.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 Null0.

Ques 2. 2 Router from bunch of OSPF enabled neighbors (Connected on same Layer 2 Switch)
are showing 2-way but administrators says it is normal behavior. Kindly elaborate?
This is default behavior since in a broadcast network, 2 routers who are neither DR nor BDR, will
form a 2-Way neighborship with each other and ‘FULL’ with the DR/BDRs.

Ques 3. What is one key condition for “ATTEMPT” state to occur during OSPF neighborship
building phase?
OSPF uses this state only if neighbors are statically configured with neighbor command

Ques 4. In OSPF DR / BDR election, firstly which is elected DR or BDR?

BDR

Ques 5. In the below given diagram, if we have connected two different networks with different
OSPF process id’s configured, will communication happen across them? What needs to be done,
to communicate with each other?
 Two different processes on a single router do not communicate at all, until & unless we are
doing some redistribution.

Ques 6. RIP uses which UDP Port for operating?

UDP Port 520

Ques 7. What is IP Protocol number of EIGRP & OSPF?

IP Protocol number of EIGRP is 88
IP Protocol number of OSPF is 89

Ques 8. Which port is used by BGP?

BGP use TCP Port 179

Ques 9. What are probable causes of OSPF neighbors being stuck in EXTRAT/EXCHANGE state?
Below are the probable causes -
 MTU mismatch on interface
 Duplicate router IDs on neighbors
 Inability to ping across with more than certain MTU size
 Broken unicast connectivity because of the following:
o Wrong VC/DLCI mapping in Frame Relay/ATM switch
o Access list blocking the unicast
o NAT translating the unicast
 Network type of point-to-point between PRI and BRI dialer
Ques 10. In below configured OSPF setup, which type of Router is the Router C?

Router C is an Area Border Router

Ques 11. What is Route Poisoning?

Route poisoning is a method that prevents a certain network from sending data packets to a
path destination that has already become invalid.

Ques 12. What is Split Horizon?

Split horizon is a method of preventing a routing loop in a network. The basic principle is that
Information about the routing for a particular packet is never sent back in the direction from
which it was received.

Ques 13. RIP sends periodic updates after how many seconds?
30 seconds

Ques 14. What type of protocol is RIP?

Distance Vector
Ques 15. What is difference between RIP v1 and v2?

Ques 16. What are RIP Hold-down and Flush timers?

Hold-down timer = 180 sec
Flush timer = 240 sec

Ques 17. What type of protocol is EIGRP?

Hybrid

Ques 18. On LAN, EIGRP Hellos are sent after how many seconds?
5

Ques 19. What is Feasible Distance in EIGRP?

The route with the lowest metric to each network will become the Feasible Distance (FD). The
Feasible Distance for each network will be installed into the routing table.

Ques 20. What is feasible successor in EIGRP?

A feasible successor is a path whose reported distance is less than the feasible distance, and it is
considered a backup route.
Ques 21. From Router A to Destination Network, which route will become the feasible distance
for Router A?

Route through Router D will become the Feasible distance for Router A

Ques 22. Which type of EIGRP packets are unicast and which are multicast?
Unicast EIGRP packets types are -
• Update packets (can be unicast or multicast)
• Reply packets
• Acknowledgement packets

Multicast EIGRP packet types are -

• Update packets (can be unicast or multicast)
• Hello packets
• Query packets

Ques 23. How many bits do IPv4 and IPv6 Address consists of?
IPv4 consists of 32 bits and IPv6 consists of 128 bits.

Ques 24. Which Routing Protocol is used to find network path information within an Autonomous
System?
Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP)

Ques 25. Which Routing Protocol is used to find network path information between different
Autonomous Systems?
Exterior Gateway Protocol (EGP)

Ques 26. List down some IGP routing protocols?

• RIP
• OSPF
 • EIGRP

Ques 27. List down EGP Routing protocols?

BGP

Ques 28. Administrative Distance Value of OSPF is?

110

Ques 29. What is the Administrative Distance Value of

 Internal EIGRP
 External EIGRP
 EIGRP Summary

Below are the AD values of EIGRP -

 Internal EIGRP - 90
 External EIGRP - 170
 EIGRP Summary - 5

Ques 30. Which type of packets make up the EIGRP neighbor table?
EIGRP Hello packets

Ques 31. What all information is contained in EIGRP neighbor table?

The IP address of the neighboring router -
• The local interface that received the neighbor’s Hello packet.
• The Hold timer.
• A sequence number indicating the order neighbors were learned.

Ques 32. From Router A to Destination Network, which route will become the Successor for
Router A?

Route through Router B will become the Feasible Successor for Router A
Ques 33. In terms of EIGRP, how many feasible successors are kept in the routing table?
EIGRP will keep up to six feasible successors in the topology table. Only the one with the best
metric (the successor) is placed in the routing table.

Ques 34. What is feasible condition?

A route is entered into the EIGRP topology table as a feasible successor only if it meets the
feasibility condition, which states that the reported distance of a route must be lower than the
feasible distance of the current successor route.

Ques 35. Which EIGRP parameters used to calculate metric? Which parameters are used by
default?
5 parameters used for matric calculation are – Bandwidth, Load, Delay, Reliability, MTU
By default EIGRP uses Bandwidth and Delay for metric calculation.

Ques 36. From below diagram, which Router Type is Router G in terms of OSPF?

Router G is an Autonomous System Border Router

Ques 37. OSPF process builds and maintains three separate tables, which are these?
• Neighbor Table
• Topology Table
• Routing Table

Ques 38. Which OSPF table is responsible for keeping all possible routes to all known networks?
Topology table
Ques 39. What is order of preference for Router ID selection in OSPF?
Below is the criteria as per following order -
• The Router ID manually specified.
• If not manually specified, the highest IP address configured on Loopback interface
will become the Router ID.
• If no loopback interface exists, the highest IP address configured on any physical
interface will become the Router ID.

Ques 40. By default, Hello packets are sent out OSPF-enabled interfaces after how many seconds
for broadcast and point-to-point interfaces?
10 seconds

Ques 41. What are OSPF Neighbor states?

 Down
 Init
 2way
 Exstart
 Exchange
 Loading
 Full

Ques 42. What happens in Exstart state?

Exstart state indicates that the routers are preparing to share link state information.
Master/slave relationships are formed between routers to determine who will begin the
exchange.

Ques 43. What needs to be done to make sure a router does not ever become a DR?
A priority of 0 will prevent the router from being elected DR or BDR.

Ques 44. In OSPF, What is other name of Area 0?

Backbone Area

Ques 45. State the different OSPF router types?

 Internal Router
 Area Border Router
 Backbone Router
 Autonomous System border router

Ques 46. 2 OSPF neighbor configuration shows “neighbor” keyword being used followed by
neighbor IP address. What does this mean in terms of traffic flow?
“Neighbor” keyword makes traffic between neighbors to be on unicast instead of multicast.
Ques 47. What is difference between “default-information originate” and “default-information
originate always” in OSPF?
“default-information originate” will advertise a default route in OSPF with one condition i.e.
default route should already be there in the routing table.
“default-information originate always” with “always” keyword it will advertise the default
route into OSPF even if we don’t have default route in the routing table.

Ques 48. What is Administrative Distance Value of RIP?

120

Ques 49. What is Administrative Distance Value of eBGP?

20

Ques 50. Administrative Distance Value of iBGP is?

200

Ques 51. What is Multicast Update Address of RIPv2?

224.0.0.9

Ques 52. What is the longest prefix length on which PTP Link as can work?
/31 = (255.255.255.254)

Ques 53. What is the function of DSCP filed in IPv4 header? What is its size?
DSCP field is used to classify traffic based on QoS. It is 8 bits ling.

Ques 54. In IPv6, Site local address begins with which value?
FECx:

Ques 55. How is Broadcast address depicted in Ipv6?

There are no broadcast addresses in IPv6

Ques 56. What is the function of “permanent” keyword at end of a static route?
“Permanent” keyword ensures that a static route remains permantly in the routing table, even if the
next-hop interface is down -
E.g. –
Router(config)# ip route 192.168.0.0 255.255.0.0 172.16.1.1 permanent

Ques 57. List down BGP Peer Messages?

 Open
 Keepalive
 Update
 Notification
Ques 58. List down BGP FSM states?
 Idle
 Connect
 Active
 OpenSent
 OpenConfirm
 Established

Ques 59. What is Route Reflector in BGP?

A route reflector (RR) is a mechanism used in BGP to mitigate the requirement of full mesh in
iBGP. An RR acts as a focal point for IBGP sessions. All the other iBGP routers become route
reflector clients. Route reflectors can advertise updates received from an iBGP peer to another
iBGP peer under specific conditions.

Ques 60. List down categories of BGP Attributes?

 Well-known Mandatory
 Well-known Discretionary
 Optional Transitive
 Optional Non-Transitive

Ques 61. Describe BGP Well-known Discretionary Attribute?

These are Standard attributes supported by all BGP implementations, and are optionally
included in BGP updates.

Ques 62. In NSSA, external routes enters as LSA-7. But, if LSA-7 is not required, what is the
command to stop LSA-7?
Use command: Area <Area Number> nssa no-redistribution

Ques 63. List the order (upto 6 attributes) for a BGP to determine a route as best path?
 Weight
 Local Preference
 Locally Originated
 AS Path
 Origin Code
 MED

Ques 64. What is Local preference attribute of BGP?

The Local Preference attribute is applied to inbound external routes, dictating the best
outbound path. The highest Local Preference is preferred, and the default preference is 100.
Ques 65. In terms of BGP, what type of peering would be done between RouterB and RouterD?

iBGP Peering would be done between RouterB and RouterD

Ques 66. Consider below diagram and configurations. Which Router will be used to reach any
destination outside of AS100 to AS900.

RouterB(config)# router bgp 100

RouterB(config-router)# bgp default local-preference 200
RouterD(config)# router bgp 100
RouterD(config-router)# bgp default local-preference 300
RouterA (and RouterB) will prefer the route through RouterD to reach any destination outside
the local AS 100.

Ques 67. What is collision domain?

A collision domain is simply defined as any physical segment where a collision can occur.
 Ques 68. What is the use of VLAN?
By default, a switch will forward both broadcasts and multicasts out every port but the
originating port. However, a switch can be logically segmented into separate broadcast domains,
using Virtual LANs (or VLANs). Additionally, VLAN provides security by limiting information of
specific group of users (Subnets) limited to their VLAN only.

Ques 69. On Cisco switches, all interfaces belong to which VLAN by default?
VLAN 1

Ques 70. CDP, STP and VTP traffic is carried out by which VLAN?
VLAN 1

Ques 71. How many VTP modes are there in Cisco Switches? List them.
 Server
 Client
 Transparent

Ques 72. For switches running in VTP server or client mode where the list of VLANs is stored?
The list of VLANs are stored in a database file named vlan.dat

Ques 73. For switches running in VTP transparent mode, where are the list of VLANs stored in?
List of VLANs are stored in the startup-config file in NVRAM.

Ques 74. What is Access Port?

An access port is a member of only a single VLAN. Access ports are most often used to connect host
devices, such as computers and printers.

Ques 75. What is Trunk Port?

A trunk port is not only a member of a single VLAN. The traffic from any or all VLANs can
traverse trunk links to reach other switches.
Ques 76. When is a VLAN tagged in each frame?
Tagging only occurs when a frame is sent out a trunk port. Traffic sent out access ports is never
tagged.

Ques 77. What is Native VLAN?

The native VLAN determines the VLAN that untagged traffic belongs to. By default on all
trunking ports, the native VLAN is VLAN 1

Ques 78. What is DTP?

DTP is a Cisco Proprietary dynamic trunking protocol used for dynamically negotiation of trunk
port.

Ques 79. What are the two modes of DTP?

Desirable – the port will actively attempt to form a trunk with the remote switch. This is the
default setting.
Auto – the port will passively wait for the remote switch to initiate the trunk.

Ques 80. Trunk ports send out DTP frames after how many seconds to indicate their configured
mode?
30 Seconds

Ques 81. What is VTP?

It is a Cisco’s proprietary VLAN Trunking Protocol (VTP) which simplifies the management in
switching environment. Updates to the VLAN database are propagated to all switches using VTP
advertisements.

Ques 82. What is the requirement for Switches when they comes to VTP domain?
VTP requires that all participating switches join a VTP domain. Switches must belong to the
same domain to share VLAN information, and a switch can only belong to a single domain.

Ques 83. Define VTP Server Mode?

VTP servers are responsible for creating, deleting, or modifying entries in the VLAN database.
Each VTP domain must have at least one VTP server, and this is the default mode for Cisco
 switches.

Ques 84. Define VTP Client mode?

VTP clients cannot modify the VLAN database, and rely on advertisements from other switches
to update VLAN information. A client will also forward VTP advertisements out every trunk port.

Ques 85. Define VTP Transparent mode?

A VTP transparent switch maintains its own local VLAN database, and does not directly
participate in the VTP domain. A transparent switch will never accept VLAN database
information from another switch, even a server. Also, a transparent switch will never advertise
its local VLAN database to another switch.

Ques 86. What is Dynamic ARP Inspection?

Dynamic ARP Inspection (DAI) mitigates the risk of ARP Spoofing, by inspecting all ARP traffic on
untrusted ports. DAI will confirm that a legitimate MAC-to-IP translation has occurred, by
comparing it against a trusted database.

Ques 87. What are the three Violation Actions?

 Shutdown
 Restrict
 Protect

Ques 88. What happens when violation mode is set to Shutdown?

If a violation occurs, the interface is placed in an errdisable state. The interface will stop
forwarding all traffic, including non-violating traffic, until it is removed from an errdisable state.
This is the default action for Port Security.

Ques 89. What happens when violation mode is set to restrict?

If a violation occurs, the interface will remain online. Legitimate traffic will be forwarded, and
unauthorized traffic will be dropped. Violations are logged, either via a syslog message or SNMP
trap.

Ques 90. What happens when violation mode is set to protect?

If a violation occurs, the interface will remain online. Legitimate traffic will be forwarded and
unauthorized traffic will be dropped, but no logging will occur.

Ques 91. What is the function of command in OSPF “ip ospf database filter all out”
OSPF database-filter will block LSAs flooding in the outbound direction from the interface on
which the command is applied.

Ques 92. What is Multicast Update Address of EIGRP?

224.0.0.10
Ques 93. What is Multicast Update Address of OSPF?
 224.0.0.5 (All routers)
 224.0.0.6 (All OSPF Designated Routers)

Ques 94. What is Port Aggregation?

Port aggregation allows multiple physical ports to be bundled together to form a single logical
port. The switch and STP will treat the bundled ports as a single interface, eliminating the
possibility of a switching loop.

Ques 95. What are two dynamic EtherChannel protocols?

 PAgP (Port Aggregation Protocol)
 LACP (Link Aggregation Control Protocol)

Ques 96. How many ports can be bundled in an etherchannel?

A maximum of 8 active ports are supported in a single EtherChannel.

Ques 97. STP switches exchange BPDU to a dedicated MAC multicast address, which is?
0180.c200.0000

Ques 98. What are STP port states?

 Blocking
 Listening
 Learning
 Forwarding

Ques 99. What are STP timers?

 Hello timer
 Forward delay timer
 Max age timer

Ques 100. What is Max Age Timer?

The max age timer indicates how long a switch will retain BPDU information from a neighbor
switch, before discarding it.

Ques 101. What is difference between PAGP and LACP?

Below table enumerate difference between PAGP and LACP –
Ques 102. A Network designer is creating a Campus setup where multiple buildings are being
connected in a ring fashion over Fiber and having Layer2 Switches at each building. What key STP
consideration the designer should take while creating the Fiber Ring?
The Fiber ring diameter can only go upto 7 Layer2 Switches for each ring.

Ques 103. What is PortFast?

PortFast allows a switch port to bypass the usual progression of STP states. The port will instead
transition from a blocking to a forwarding state immediately, eliminating the typical 30 second
delay.

Ques 104. What is difference between PortFast, UplinkFast and BackboneFast?

Ques 105. What are three RSTP Port states?
 Discarding
 Learning
 Forwarding

Ques 106. What is difference between Port channel and Trunk?

With PortChannel or what is commonly referred to as 802.1ad link aggregation, you aggregate
multiple links together. For example, you aggregate multiple 1Gig or 10Gig interfaces together
to have access to more bandwidth. The Maximum number of links that you can bundle together
is 8. If there are 2 physical links in each channel and the physical links are 1Gbps each then yes
your port channel is 2Gbps.
A regular trunk link is a link that carries multiple VLANs. If 1 physical link is configured as trunk,
then speed of Trunk port is 1Gbps unlike port channel which was 2Gbps as given in previous
paragraph.

Ques 107. Which Switch will become Root Bridge in below topology and why?

SwitchA will become the root bridge because of it’s lower MAC address.
Note – Though Switch A and Switch D also have the same priority, still since Switch A has lower
mac address, hence it will becomes the root bridge.
Ques 108. In below diagram, which Port will be blocked and why?

Gi2/24 of SwitchB will be blocked because the sender Port ID from gi2/10 is preferred, due
to the lower port number. Thus, gi2/23 on SwitchB will become the root port.

Ques 109. Considering the etherchannel load-balancing method as src-ip, from which interface will
the source IP 10.1.1.3 will traverse out from SwitchA?

Source IP 10.1.1.3 will be forwarded out from Gi2/24.

Ques 110. In the below topology, which Hosts will receive the broadcast generated by HostA?

HostB, HostD, and HostE will receive the broadcasts generated by HostA

Ques 111. In the given diagram, Switch 1 has Vlan 10 as native VLAN over trunk while Switch 2 has
VLAN 20 as native VLAN over trunk. Can PC1 ping PC2?

No, since there will native VLAN match between both the switches.

Ques 112. What is non-designated port?

A non-designated port is one with a higher cost than the designated port. Non designated ports
are put in blocking mode – they are not forwarding ports.

Ques 113. What is UDLD?

Unidirectional Link Detection (UDLD) is a Cisco-proprietary layer two protocol devised to
automatically detect the loss of bidirectional communication on a link. UDLD sends out ID
frames on a port, and waits for the remote switch to respond with its own ID frame. If the
remote switch does not respond, then it assumes the interface has malfunctioned and become
unidirectional.
UDLD can be configured in 2 modes –
 Normal Mode– If a unidirectional link is detected, the port is notshut down, but merely
flagged as being in an undetermined state.
 Aggressive Mode– If a unidirectional link is detected, the port is placed in an errdisable
state. It can be enabled globally (but only for Fiber ports on the switch):