300-420 Exam Dumps : Designing Cisco Enterprise Networks

The correct design is to use the same anycast RP address on loopback interfaces so receivers and sources register with their nearest available rendezvous point. Cisco Anycast RP designs use a common RP address advertised from multiple RP routers, allowing unicast routing to direct PIM joins and registers to the closest RP. MSDP is then used between the RP routers so each RP can learn about active sources registered to the other RP. This provides resilience and local registration while keeping RP reachability consistent for the multicast domain. Option B captures the key behavior: the RP loopback is configured with the same /32 address, and normal routing sends traffic to the closest RP. Configuring a hash value, group range splitting, or equal priority alone does not provide the Anycast RP behavior required here. A professional design should also use unique loopbacks for MSDP peer sessions while keeping the shared anycast loopback as the RP address. Reference topics: Anycast RP, MSDP, PIM-SM rendezvous points, source registration, multicast high availability.

Running BFD between EIGRP neighbors is the appropriate design when the problem is traffic loss during link failure and the requirement is to reduce the impact of the failure. EIGRP can detect neighbor loss through its hello and hold timers, but those timers may not be fast enough for applications sensitive to packet loss. Bidirectional Forwarding Detection provides rapid failure detection independent of the routing protocol’s normal timer expiration. When BFD detects a failed forwarding path, it notifies EIGRP so the routing process can converge without waiting for the EIGRP hold timer. Summarization is still a valuable scaling technique, but it primarily reduces route table size and query scope; it does not directly accelerate failure detection on an individual inter-router link. Reducing EIGRP hello and hold timers can improve detection, but it increases control-plane load and is less efficient than BFD. The question emphasizes data loss when any one link fails, so fast failure detection is the best corrective design. Reference topics: EIGRP convergence, BFD, failure detection, hello and hold timers, routed-link resiliency.

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.