IGP Interview Questions For CCNA and CCNP Engineers

Market is on boom and almost every company has opened its door for new positions and
everyone is looking for change to grab new positions with new challenges. So make sure
that you have prepared the answers for the below questions before your interview. The
questions are generic and will make very good impression on interviewer if you answer
them in organised and structured manner. The depicted IGP interview questions are
for CCNA and CCNP engineers.

AD value for all routing protocols?

Routing Protocol ADValue
Connected 0
Static 1
EBGP 20
EIGRP 90
IGRP 100
OSPF 110
IS-IS 115
RIP 120
IBGP 200

1. Difference between RIPv1 and RIPv2?

The main difference between RIPv1 is a classfull routing protocol and
RipV1 & Rip V2 is distance vector Routing Protocol.
Ripv1 Does not support discontiguous subnets
RipV1 Does not support VLSM.
Rip V1 does not send subnet mask in routing update.
Rip V1 Routing updates are broadcast

RIPv2 is classless routing.

RIPv2 support for VLSM and CIDR.
Rip v2 Next hop address is included in updates
Rip v2 Routing updates are multicast.
Rip v2 use of authentication is an option
The multicast address RIPv2 sends to is 224.0.0.9.

Similarities between RIPv1 & RIPv2

– Use of timers to prevent routing loops
– Use of split horizon or split horizon with poison reverse
– Use of triggered updates
– Maximum hop count of 15
2. How many number of routes carried by RIP packet?
A single RIP update can contain between 1 - 25 Route Table Entries.

3. Is OSPF link state or distance vector or path vector protocol?

Link state Routing protocol

4. What is the difference between OSPF and IS-IS and which one is preferred?
Both are link state Routing Protocol.

5. Can we use BGP instead of any IGP?

Yes. But IBGP is having AD of 200 & converges very slowly so it is not
recommended unless you use your network as transit.

6. How many network types available in OSPF?

Broadcast, Point-to-Point, Non-Broadcast Multi Access, Point-to–multipoint, Point-to-
multipoint nonbroadcast

7. Different type of Link State Advertisements aka LSA?

11 (LSA's 1-5,7 used)

8. LSA 3 and LSA 4 are generated by which router?

ABR

9. When to use Stub and Not So Stubby Area?

To reduce Routing Table size when router have only one exit point (or one neighbour).

10. How to get the external routes without making area Not So Stubby?
By having ASBR in regular area where the external LSA's will be received as LSA Type
5

11. What is the different type of route summarization available in OSPF?

By ABR, Type 3 & 4 LSA; By ASBR Type 5 LSA can be summarized

12. What is the requirement of doing summarization?

Localizing LSA's to regular area and sends summaries of LSA into backbone to reduce
RT size & restricting LSU, LSR query range.

13. A major network is advertised as summary in one area and few of the routes from that
network is configured in another area. What will happen in that case?
Routing table matches maximum ip prefix length, so the specific routes will be used first
& if doesn’t match the summary route will be used.

14. If any of the OSPF area is not stabilized, does it impact another area?
If summarization is configured it will not impact another area.
15. What is the use of forwarding address in LSA 5 and LSA 7?
LSA 5 and 7does not have SPF run on it. Routers run SPF on LSA 4 to get to the ASBR,
and trust whatever info the ASBR reports in

16. External routes are available in OSPF database but not installing in routing table?
Distribution list filters routes while populating Routing Table

17. If loopback is not configured, what will be the router-id selected by OSPF process?
Highest active ip address on router in ospf process

18. Can we run multiple OSPF process in single router and what is the advantage of using
it?
Yes.

19. What are timers of different protocols?

RIP - 30 Sec(Update), 180 Sec(Timeout), 120 Sec(Remove)
EIGRP - For LAN 5 Sec(Hello) 15 Sec(hold-timer)
For WAN 60 Sec(Hello) 180 S(hold-timer)
OSPF
10 Sec(Hello)
40 Sec(Dead-interval)
LSAs are updated every 30min, even if nothing changes.

20. Multicast address of used by OSPF.

224.0.0.5, 224.0.0.0.6

20. Multicast address of used by EIGRP

224.0.0.10

20. Multicast address of used by rip

224.0.0.9

21. OSPF works on which layer?

Layer 3

22. What is backbone area in OSPF?

The backbone acts as a hub for inter-area transit traffic and the distribution of routing
information between areas. Inter-area traffic is routed to the backbone, then routed to the
destination area, and finally routed to the destination host within the destination area

23. Can we use OSPF without backbone area?

No. Backbone area is needed.

24. Is it required that OSPF router-id must reachable in IGP cloud?

No.

25. After configuring new router-id, automatically it will be used or do we need to use
some type of command to get it operational.
We need to restart ospf process by command “clear ip ospf process”

26. Why the secondary ip address of interface is not advertising in IGP cloud?
Hello packets are sent from primary interface

27. OSPF neighbourship is not coming up. Please tell the various steps to troubleshoot it.
Reasons –
Layer 2 is down,
OSPF not enabled on the interface,
Interface is defines as passive,
Mismatched subnet mask,
Mismatch MTU
Mismatched hello/dead interval,
Mismatched Authentication key,
Mismatched area ID,
Mismatched Transit/Stub area
Commands - show ip ospf neighbor,
show ip ospf interface,
debug ip ospf adjacency

28. One side MTU is 1500 and another side MTU is 1600. Does it affect neighbourship?
Yes. Adjacencies will stuck in Exstart/Excahnge state

29. Provide process of DR and BDR election.

Higest OSPF priority. RID is used If same OSPF priority then highest for tiebreaker

30. If DR is down and no BDR is configured what will happen?

New DR and BDR election process will resume.
Adjacency between DROTHERS

31. What is the difference between a neighbor and adjacent neighbor?

State : FULL/BDR means the adjacency is FULL with the DR and BDR (Note
an adjacency is established by all routers of the multiaccess segement/NBMA with DR
and BDR).For those which are 2WAY/DROTHER means a neighbor relationship.

32. My OSPF neighbourship is showing 2-way, what does it mean?

Adjacency between DROTHERS

33. Define different type of OSPF neighbor states?

Step 1. Down state—OSPF process not yet started, so no hellos sent.
**Attempt
This state is only valid for manually configured neighbors in an NBMA environment**
Step 2. Init state—Router sends hello packets out all OSPF interfaces.
Step 3. Two-way state—Router receives a hello from another router that contains its own
router ID in the neighbor list. All other required elements match, so routers can become
Neighbors.
Step 4. Exstart state—If routers become adjacent (exchange routes), they determine who
will start the exchange process.).
Step 5. Exchange state—Routers exchange DBDs listing the LSAs in their LSD by RID
and sequence number.
Step 6. Loading state—Each router compares the DBD received to the contents of its LS
database. It then sends a LSR for missing or outdated LSAs. Each router responds to its
Neighbor’s LSR with a Link State Update. Each LSU is acknowledged.
Step 7. Full state—The LSDB has been synchronized with the adjacent neighbor.

34. OSPF external routes are not redistributing?

ACL filters should be checked

35. IF OSPF stuck in INIT (one way hello)?

1. One side is blocking the hello packet with ACL, distribute lists,
2. One side is translating (NAT) ospf hello,
3. One side multicast capabilities is broken, no ping to 224.0.0.5,
4. Must be a Layer 2 problem (unidirectional link),
5. Dialer map or frame-relay map is missing ‘broadcast’"
6. Authentication is enabled on only one side

36. OSPF stuck in 2-WAY

1. This is normal on broadcast network types. This is to reduce the amount of flooding on
the wire as DROTHERS establish only2-way state among themselves.
2. Problems can happen if Layer 2 is broken

37. OSPF stuck in EXSTART/EXCHANGE

1.Neighbor router is from diff vendor, adjust the mtu on the other vendor router.
2. Mismatch MTU.
3. Neighbor RID is same as ours.
4. Unicast is broken - (a). wrong VC/DLCi mapping in frame/ATM environment in
highly redundant network (b). mtu problem, can’t ping across with more than certain
length packet (c). access-list blocking unicast. After 2-way OSPF send unicast packet
except p2p links
d. NAT is translating unicast packet
5. Between PRI and BRI/dialer and network type is p2p

38. OSPF stuck in LOADING

Distribute-list in is configured, OSPF is enabled on secondary but not on primary,
Backbone area became discontigous.
show ip ospf database <x> ‘x’ can be router, network, summary,summary-asbr, external,
nssa
39. SPF is running constantly
Check for LSA's having low LSAge, frequently changing seq nos
sh ip ospf stat, Seq #, LS Age, Debug ip ospf monitor, show ip ospf database database-
sum

40. CPU hogs

Too many inter area or external routes --- same should be summarized

41. LSA group pacing

1.All LSA refresh every 30 min (bad!)
2.Timers of each LSA get sync (worse!)
3.With group pacing only LSAs that reach max-age get refreshed periodically
4.interval is configurable

42. Seq # mismatch

1. LSA should one of 5 LSAs
2. If LSA is type 5 and the neighbor is associated with a stub area
3. If one of the options change
4. If the state of MS bit is inconsistent with master slave connection
5. If the I-bit is set
6. If the master receives a DBD packet after a dead interval
7. If the requested LSA is not found,then something has gone wrong with the database
exchange
debug ip ospf adjacency

43. Neighbor flapping

If the media is Frame Relay look for broadcast queue drops, Must be a Layer 2 problem
debug ip ospf adjacency, ospf log-adjacency-change, show ip ospf neighbors detail, show
interface

44. Could not allocate router id

If no interface up/up with valid ip address, if no ip addresses assigned

45. OSPF unknown routing protocol

OSPF is not supported on low end platform, For 1000 and 1600 routers download plus
version 800 routes are not supported to run ospf"

46. What Advantages of OSPF?

Advantages of OSPF
OSPF is an open standard,
Fast convergence
OSPF is hierarchical routing protocol, using area 0 (Autonomous System) at the top of
the hierarchy.
OSPF can scale to large or very large internetworks.
OSPF supports VLSM, resulting in efficient use of networking resources.
OSPF uses multicasting within areas.
OSPF only sends updates which have changed; it does not send the entire routing table,
which in turn conserves network bandwidth.
Using areas, OSPF networks can be logically segmented to improve administration, and
decrease the size of routing tables.
OSPF-calculated routes are always loop-free
Stub area capability.
Supports Authentication.

47. Disadvantages of OSPF?

Disadvantages of OSPF:
OSPF is very processor intensive due to implementation of SPF algorithm. OSPF
maintains multiple copies of routing information, increasing the amount of memory
needed.
OSPF is a more complex protocol to implement.
Can’t support unequal load balance

48. Use of area in ospf

Dividing an OSPF network into areas does the following:
Minimizes the number of routing table entries.
Contains LSA flooding to a reasonable area.
Minimizes the impact of a topology change.
Enforces the concept of a hierarchical network design.

50. What is the maximum number of hops that OSPF allows before marking a network as
unreachable?
Unlimited

51. Ospf packet types?

Hello—Identifies neighbors and serves as a keepalive.
Link State Request (LSR)—A request for an Link State Update (LSU). Contains the type
of LSU requested and the ID of the router requesting it.
Database Description (DBD)—A summary of the LSDB, including the RID and sequence
number of each LSA in the LSDB.
Link State Update (LSU)—Contains a full LSA entry. An LSA includes topology
information; for example, the RID of this router and the RID and cost to each neighbor.
One LSU can contain multiple LSAs.
Link State Acknowledgment (LSAck)—Acknowledges all other OSPF packets (except
hellos).OSPF traffic is multicast to either of two addresses: 224.0.0.5 for all OSPF routers
or 224.0.0.6 for all OSPF DRs.

52. What are parameters that should match for OSPF routers to become neighbor
Hello/dead timers
Area ID
Authentication type and password
Stub area flag
53. OSPF summarization commands?
Inter-area route summarizations are created on the ABR under the OSPF routing process
using the area range command. Thefollowing command advertises 172.16.0.0/12 from
area 1:
Router(config-router)#area 1 range 172.16.0.0 255.240.0.0
External route summarization is done on an ASBR using the summary-address command
under the OSPF routing process. The following example summarizes a range of external
routes to 192.168.0.0/16 and injects a single route into OSPF.
Router(config-router)#summary-address 192.168.0.0 255.255.0.0

54. What is Virtual link?

OSPF requires that all areas be connected to area 0 and that area 0 must be contiguous.
When this is not possible, you can use a virtual link to bridge across an intermediate area.
#router ospf 1
#area area-number virtual-link router-id.

EIGRP
1. Neighbor stability?
Unidirectional links, Mismatched masks, Mismatch of primary/secondary addresses
eigrp log-neighbor-changes, debug eigrp packet hello

2. Physical link up/down

Could be layer 2 issue. EIGRP takes down the neighbors through this interface.
Sh interface

3. Hold timer expiration

Multicast Hellos are missed, typically caused by congestion or physical errors

4. Retry limit exceeded

Reliable packet was not acknowledged, Actual timeout is 16 retransmits or hold time,
whichever is longer.

5. Stuck-in-active routes
Reason - Bad or congested links, Query range is too long, Excessive redundancy,
Router memory shortage, Software defects (very seldom)
Decrease query scope by - 1. Summarization (manual or auto), 2. Distribute-lists
particularly on dual-homed remotes 3. Stub routers (future), 4. Removing Excessive
Redundancy

6. High CPU
Find what activity is taking CPU and resolve it (Route(s) flapping/ Routing loop)
show process cpu , Show ip eigrp events

7. Eigrp Advantages
DUAL
Backup routes
Incremental updates
Loop-free networks
Reduced bandwidth usage
Support for multiple network layer protocols (IP, IPX, AppleTalk)
Support for variable-length subnet masks (VLSMs), discontinuous networks, and
classless routing
Advanced distance vector capabilities
Automatic route summarization on major network boundaries
Supports authentication
Supports Unequal coast load balancing
Works on NBMA and other networks without special configuration

8. EIGRP scalability issue

EIGRP Scalability
The number of routes that must be exchanged
The number of routers that must know of a topology change
The number of alternate routes to a network
The number of hops from one end of the network to the other

9. Eigrp Disadvantages
Cisco proprietary - does not work with non-Cisco routers
Doesn’t scale as well as OSPF and ISIS

10. EIGRP route flapping issue?

Important tool for troubleshooting this problem is the "show ip eigrp event" command.
This command reveals which neighbor is updating and the metric with which it's
updating. When the route timer in the routing table always shows 00:00:00, it doesn't
necessarily mean that the router is constantly taking the route out and reinstalling it. It
simply means that one of the router's neighbors is constantly updating the router with the
route. The neighbor updating the route is not necessarily the best path to the route, but it
is one possible path. The router simply refreshes the timer because it got an update from
one of the neighbors. To truly verify that the router is taking out the route from the
routing table and reinstalling it, use the debug ip routing

11. What are key components of EIGRP?

EIGRP’s function is controlled by four key technologies:
Neighbor discovery and maintenance—Uses periodic hello messages
The Reliable Transport Protocol (RTP)—Controls sending, tracking, and acknowledging
EIGRP messages
Diffusing Update Algorithm (DUAL)—determines the best loop free route
Protocol-independent modules (PDM)—Modules are “plug-ins” for IP, IPX, and
AppleTalk versions of EIGRP

12. Tables in EIGRP?

EIGRP tables
The neighbor table is built from EIGRP hellos and used for reliable delivery.
The topology table contains EIGRP routing information for best paths and loop-free
alternatives.
EIGRP places best routes from its topology table into the common routing table.

13. EIGRP packet types?

Packet Types
EIGRP uses five packet types:
Hello—Identifies neighbors and serves as a keep alive mechanism
Update—reliably sends route information
Query—reliably requests specific route information
Reply—reliably responds to a query
ACK—Acknowledgment

14. Define Neighbor Discovery and Route Exchange process in EIGRP?

Step 1. Router A sends out a hello.
Step 2. Router B sends back a hello and an update. The update contains routing
information.
Step 3. Router A acknowledges the update.
Step 4. Router A sends its update.
Step 5. Router B acknowledges.
Once two routers are EIGRP neighbors, they use hellos between them as keep lives.
Additional route information is sent only if a route is lost or a new route is discovered.

15. What is advertised distance (AD) and feasible distance (FD)?

The AD is the metric from the neighbor to the network. FD is the metric from this router,
through the neighbor, to the network.

16. What is successor and feasible successor?

The path with the lowest metric is called the successor path. EIGRP paths with a lower
AD than the FD of the successor path are guaranteed loop-free and called feasible
successors.

17. Troubleshooting command in EIGRP?

show ip route eigrp - To filter the routing table and show only the routes learned from
EIGRP
show ip protocols - verifies autonomous system, timer values, identified networks, and
EIGRP neighbors (routing information sources).
show ip eigrp topology - identifies successors and feasible successors
show ip eigrp traffic - show the amount and types of EIGRP messages
show ip eigrp neighbors - verify that the correct routers are neighbors

18. Summarization command in EIGRP?

#interface (interface)
#ip summary-address eigrp autonomous_system (prefix) (subnet mask)
19. How to configure unequal coast load balancing?
#router eigrp 7
#variance 2

20. How to configure wan interface ip of EIGRP?

#ip bandwidth-percent eigrp (AS) (percentage)

21. What is graceful Shutdown.

Graceful shutdown is another feature that speeds network convergence. Whenever the
EIGRP process is shut down, the router sends a “goodbye” message to its neighbors. The
neighbors can then mmediately recalculate any paths that used the router as the next hop,
rather than waiting for the hold timer to expire.

22. What is SIA-queries & SIA-replyes?

Routers use SIA-Queries and SIA-Replies to prevent loss of a neighbor unnecessarily
during SIA conditions. A router sends its neighbor a SIAQuery after no reply to a normal
query. If the neighbor responds with a SIA-Reply, then the router does not terminate the
neighbor relationship after three minutes, because it knows the neighbor is available.