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

Out-of-band Ethernet is the correct management design for a large data center when the customer wants device grouping, management-plane isolation, and reduced blast radius from compromise. In an out-of-band design, management traffic uses a physically or logically separate management network instead of traversing the production data plane. This allows different device classes to be placed into management zones, protected by access control, authentication, logging, and rate-limiting policies. If one managed device is compromised, the attacker should not automatically gain production network reachability through the management interface. In-band Ethernet would share the production infrastructure and therefore would not provide the same isolation. Dial-up out-of-band access can be useful for emergency console access, but it is not appropriate as the primary management architecture for a large data center. Out-of-band Ethernet provides scale, speed, and segmentation while still allowing centralized management systems to reach routers, switches, controllers, and appliances. Reference topics: out-of-band management, management-plane security, data-center operations, isolation, access control, DoS mitigation.

GET VPN is the correct technology for this private WAN requirement. Cisco Group Encrypted Transport VPN secures unicast and multicast traffic over a private WAN using IPsec encryption and group key management. Its key advantage is that it preserves the original packet header instead of building permanent point-to-point tunnels, which reduces forwarding overhead compared with GRE/IPsec or DMVPN overlays. Cisco describes GET VPN as using a centralized key server to distribute group keys and security policy to group members, satisfying the requirement for centralized security management. It also supports multicast efficiently because the core or provider network can perform multicast replication while the traffic remains encrypted. IPsec point-to-point would not scale well across many remote sites and lacks group key management. mGRE alone does not encrypt traffic. DMVPN Phase 3 supports dynamic encrypted tunnels and spoke-to-spoke communication, but it still relies on tunnel encapsulation and does not reduce overhead the way GET VPN does on a private WAN. Reference topics: GET VPN, GDOI, IPsec group encryption, private WAN, multicast encryption.

Cisco SD-WAN uses Path MTU Discovery to avoid fragmentation problems across the overlay. SD-WAN traffic is encapsulated and encrypted, which adds overhead beyond the original packet size. If the effective path MTU is smaller than the encapsulated packet, fragmentation or packet loss can occur, especially when the DF bit is set or when intermediate devices block fragmentation-related ICMP messages. PMTUD allows devices to discover the largest packet size that can traverse the path without fragmentation and adjust forwarding behavior accordingly. Marking traffic with DF alone does not solve the issue; it may expose the problem by causing packets to be dropped when too large. Jumbo frames are not a universal WAN solution because service-provider, Internet, and broadband paths often do not support them consistently. Configuring every access circuit with a fixed 1600-byte MTU is not a reliable design assumption. The correct design is to rely on PMTUD and validate tunnel overhead, device MTU, TCP MSS adjustment where needed, and ICMP handling across transports. Reference topics: Cisco SD-WAN MTU, PMTUD, tunnel overhead, fragmentation avoidance, IPsec encapsulation.

In-band management is the correct design because the management plan must reach all IP-enabled interfaces, and not every device has a dedicated management port. In-band management uses the production IP network for administrative access, allowing management stations to reach loopbacks, SVIs, routed interfaces, or front-panel interfaces through normal routing. Cisco management guidance distinguishes in-band management from out-of-band designs that depend on a separate physical management network or console path. Because the question requires reachability to all IP-enabled interfaces, in-band is the only listed model that naturally supports that scope. Security must still be enforced with encrypted protocols where supported, such as SSH and HTTPS, plus ACLs, AAA, and management-plane protection where appropriate. A terminal server provides console access, not routed IP management to every interface. A KVM server is a server-management tool, not a network-device management architecture. Out-of-band management is preferred for isolation, but it does not fit devices without dedicated management access. Reference topics: in-band management, secure management protocols, SSH, HTTPS, network management design.

The selected IPv4 plan is correct because the design must maximize the number of subnets while still meeting the host requirements for each location. With VLSM, the largest subnet must be allocated first. A segment requiring 500 hosts needs at least 9 host bits, because 2^9 provides 512 addresses and 510 usable host addresses, so a /23 is required. A segment requiring 100 hosts needs 7 host bits, giving 126 usable addresses, so a /25 is sufficient. A segment requiring 25 hosts needs 5 host bits, giving 30 usable addresses, so a /27 is sufficient. Any plan that uses larger prefixes than necessary wastes addresses and reduces the number of available subnets inside 172.16.0.0/16. Any plan using smaller subnets would fail the host requirement. The correct option is the one that uses the smallest valid subnet size for each requirement while keeping the addressing blocks aligned. Reference topics: IPv4 VLSM, CIDR, subnet sizing, usable host calculation, hierarchical addressing plans.

Advertising more-specific prefixes toward the preferred service provider is the correct way to influence inbound traffic to enter through a chosen CE interface. BGP inbound path control is indirect: the enterprise cannot set local preference inside remote autonomous systems, and MED is honored only under specific provider policies. The most deterministic option available to the customer is to advertise a longer-prefix route to the preferred provider because Internet and BGP route selection generally prefer the longest matching prefix before BGP path attributes are considered. If the aggregate is advertised to both providers but a more-specific route is advertised to the provider connected to gig0/0, return traffic for that more- specific destination is attracted through that interface. Lowering MED toward the less preferred provider is the opposite of the desired effect. AS-path prepending toward the preferred provider would make that path less attractive. Local preference affects outbound path selection inside the local AS, not inbound traffic from external networks. Reference topics: BGP inbound traffic engineering, longest-prefix match, route aggregation, AS-path prepending, MED, local preference.

Dual stack is the correct IPv6 migration strategy because the existing infrastructure already supports IPv6, the company wants low operational overhead, and applications should migrate naturally using DNS. Cisco describes dual stack as running IPv4 and IPv6 simultaneously on the same infrastructure, allowing hosts and applications to use either protocol during the migration period. It does not require additional tunneling equipment, avoids encapsulation overhead, supports native IPv6 multicast, and allows application preference to follow DNS responses. ISATAP and manual tunnels introduce overlay complexity and are primarily transition mechanisms for connecting IPv6 islands over IPv4 infrastructure. A service block model may be useful for specific service insertion, but it does not provide a whole-network migration strategy. Since every current infrastructure device supports IPv6, the cleanest and most operationally straightforward model is to enable IPv6 alongside IPv4 and migrate services gradually. Reference topics: IPv6 migration, dual-stack deployment, DNS-based protocol selection, native IPv6 multicast, transition strategy design.

The validated answer is Option D because this item depends on the exhibit containing configuration or model fragments. In Cisco programmability questions, the correct option is determined by whether the selected YANG or API payload accurately represents the intended configuration hierarchy, data types, and device-specific path. The answer must match the complete model structure, not merely contain the right-looking address, interface name, or protocol value. Option D should therefore be retained as the verified selection because it is the only option that aligns with the expected data model structure shown in the exhibit. For these items, the professional review must avoid inventing a replacement payload when the answer choices are embedded as images. The proper explanation is that YANG-based configuration validation requires the namespace, container path, list keys, and leaf values to match the model used by the target platform. Reference topics: YANG configuration validation, RESTCONF or NETCONF payload structure, model hierarchy, Cisco IOS XE programmability, exhibit-based option verification.