300-420 Exam Dumps - Designing Cisco Enterprise Networks (ENSLD) v1.1

Moving the link between routers C and D into area 10 provides the most direct OSPF design correction for optimal routing between the internal networks after the C-E link fails. OSPF requires careful area design because intra-area routes are preferred over interarea routes, and traffic between two routers in the same regular area should not be forced through a less optimal backbone or interarea path when a better local path exists. If the C-D link remains outside area 10, the failure of C-E can cause traffic between 10.1.1.0/24 and 172.16.1.0/24 to take a suboptimal interarea route. Placing the C-D link in area 10 keeps the alternate path within the same area and allows OSPF to calculate the best intra-area route when the primary link fails. A virtual link is used to connect a disconnected area to area 0, not to optimize this intra-area failure case. A tunnel adds unnecessary overlay complexity, and making area 10 NSSA changes external LSA behavior, not internal path optimization. Reference topics: OSPF area design, intra-area preference, failure-path optimization, link placement.

BFD with tuned timers is the correct fault-detection solution when OSPF traffic must fail over in milliseconds and cannot wait for the OSPF dead interval. Cisco describes Bidirectional Forwarding Detection as a lightweight mechanism that detects forwarding-path failures rapidly and notifies the routing protocol. OSPF can then bring down the adjacency and switch to an alternate route without waiting for the normal hello and dead timer process. Tuning SPF delay or LSA timers improves the control-plane calculation phase after OSPF has learned about a failure, but it does not provide the fastest failure detection by itself. IP SLA tracking can detect reachability problems, but it is not the standard per-neighbor OSPF millisecond detection mechanism. Decreasing SPF timers alone does not solve the requirement to avoid waiting for the dead interval. Therefore, BFD with appropriate 100 ms timers is the correct design choice. Reference topics: OSPF high availability, BFD, fast failure detection, dead interval avoidance, subsecond convergence.

Bandwidth percentage with policing is the correct QoS approach. The requirement has two separate parts: each subnet must receive a minimum share during congestion, and no subnet should introduce delay into download traffic. Bandwidth percentage is used to allocate a minimum bandwidth guarantee among classes during congestion while still allowing a class to use unused bandwidth when other classes are idle. Policing enforces a rate by dropping or remarking excess traffic rather than buffering it. That behavior is important because the question explicitly says download traffic must never experience delay. Shaping would be wrong because shaping buffers excess packets and transmits them later, which intentionally adds delay. Rate- limiting is a broad term, but when the design choice offers policing explicitly, policing is the precise mechanism that matches the no-delay requirement. A parent or class policy can reserve 25 percent per subnet on a 40 Mbps service, giving each subnet 10 Mbps during congestion while unused bandwidth remains available. Reference topics: CBWFQ bandwidth percent, traffic policing, shaping versus policing, Internet edge QoS, congestion management.

For model-driven telemetry with periodic updates, the architect must understand that each periodic update sends the subscribed data at the configured interval. Cisco telemetry guidance distinguishes periodic subscriptions from on-change subscriptions. A periodic subscription streams a full copy of the subscribed data element or table at each interval, even if the underlying state has not changed. That behavior is useful when the collector needs regular time-series samples, trending, or baseline monitoring, but it creates predictable bandwidth and collector-load requirements. On-change subscriptions are different: they publish updates when the subscribed state changes and are more efficient for state changes such as interface status, memory thresholds, or protocol adjacency m ovement. Empty subscription behavior and initial update timing may matter in specific implementations, but they are not the main design consideration in this question. Since the customer requires periodic updates, the design must size the transport, collector, retention system, and subscription intervals around repeated full data delivery. Reference topics: model-driven telemetry, periodic subscription, on-change subscription, YANG-modeled operational data, collector sizing.

DiffServ is the correct scalable QoS architecture for classifying traffic according to business requirements and using DSCP values as the priority descriptor. Cisco QoS design distinguishes DiffServ from IntServ. IntServ uses per-flow signaling with RSVP and can reserve resources, but that model is not operationally scalable across large enterprise networks. DiffServ is class-based. Traffic is classified and marked at the network edge, then each device applies per-hop behavior to those classes using local QoS policy. DSCP provides a six-bit field in the IP header, which supports more than ten classification values and allows standardized treatment classes such as EF, AF, class selector, and default. Best effort provides no differentiated treatment, and RSVP is a signaling mechanism associated with IntServ rather than the requested scalable class-based architecture. “Interserv” is not the correct Cisco QoS model term. Therefore, the engineer should design around DiffServ, with a clear trust boundary, marking policy, queuing model, and consistent treatment across WAN and campus boundaries. Reference topics: DiffServ, DSCP, per-hop behavior, class-based QoS, scalable QoS architecture.

A fabric edge node in Cisco SD-Access is the access-layer fabric device that connects endpoints to the fabric, applies policy, and registers endpoint reachability with the control plane. Cisco SD-Access design material describes edge nodes as devices that identify and authenticate endpoints, place them into the correct virtual network, and update the fabric control plane with endpoint information. The edge node is also where the anycast Layer 3 gateway commonly resides, allowing consistent gateway behavior across the fabric. Option B describes the control-plane node function, because the control plane maintains endpoint-to-location mappings in the host tracking database. Option C describes a border node, which connects the fabric to external Layer 3 networks. Option D also describes the map-resolver behavior associated with the control plane, not the fabric edge. The purpose of the edge node is therefore endpoint attachment, endpoint detection, policy association, and registration of endpoint information with the control plane so the fabric can forward traffic through the correct overlay path.

The primary consideration is that the participating hosts must support dual stack. The pilot is contained within a single VLAN, so the application traffic remains inside the same Layer 2 broadcast domain across the dual-site data center environment. Layer 2 switches forward Ethernet frames and do not need to understand the IPv6 header to carry IPv6 traffic inside the VLAN. Layer 3 switches need IPv6 capability only where IPv6 routing, gateways, ACLs, or services are required. For this pilot, the essential requirement is that the servers and endpoints running the IPv6 application can operate with both IPv4 and IPv6 enabled while the existing environment continues to support IPv4. Dual stack allows IPv6 testing without removing IPv4 reachability or forcing translation. Requiring every Layer 2 and Layer 3 switch in both data centers to be dual-stack overstates the design requirement. The hosts participating in the pilot are the critical dependency. Reference topics: IPv6 migration, dual stack, Layer 2 VLAN transport, data-center pilot design, IPv4 and IPv6 coexistence.

Root guard is the correct feature when the design must allow switches to be attached for testing but prevent those switches from influencing the spanning-tree root placement. Cisco root guard protects the intended STP root by placing a port into a root-inconsistent state if superior BPDUs are received on a port where the root should never appear. This directly addresses the risk created by rogue or lab switches connected by end users: if a user switch advertises a better bridge priority, the production access topology is not allowed to reconverge around that unauthorized device. BPDU guard is usually used on PortFast edge ports to err-disable a port that receives any BPDU, which is excellent for strict host-only ports but less aligned with the wording that users may connect their own switches for testing. Loop guard protects root or alternate ports from losing BPDUs and accidentally forwarding. BPDU skew detection is a diagnostic feature, not the correct design control. Therefore, root guard is the appropriate protection against rogue switches affecting STP topology. Reference topics: STP root placement, root guard, superior BPDUs, campus Layer 2 protection.