JN0-664 Service Provider Professional (JNCIP-SP) Questions and Answers

A sham link is a logical link between two PE routers that belong to the same OSPF area but are connected through an L3VPN. A sham link makes the PE routers appear as if they are directly connected, and prevents OSPF from preferring an intra-area back door link over the VPN backbone. To create a sham link, you need to configure the local and remote addresses of the PE routers under the [edit protocols ospf area area-id] hierarchy level1.

The customer interface in an LDP-signaled pseudowire is the interface on the PE router that connects to the CE device. An LDP-signaled pseudowire is a type of Layer 2 circuit that uses LDP to establish a point-to-point connection between two PE routers over an MPLS network. The customer interface can have different encapsulation types depending on the type of traffic that is carried over the pseudowire. The encapsulation types are ethernet-ccc, vlan-ccc, extended-vlan-ccc, atm-ccc, frame-relay-ccc, ppp-ccc, cisco-hdlc-ccc, and tcc-ccc. Depending on the encapsulation type, the customer interface can accept or reject tagged or untagged frames in the data plane, and include or exclude VLAN tags in the control plane LDP advertisement. The following table summarizes the behavior of different encapsulation types:

To create a summary route for IS-IS, you need to configure a policy statement that matches the prefixes to be summarized and sets the next-hop to discard. You also need to configure a summary-address statement under the IS-IS protocol hierarchy that references the policy statement. In this case, the policy statement leak-v6 is trying to match the prefix 2001:db9:a:fa00::/61 exactly, but this prefix is not advertised by any router in the network. Therefore, no summary route is created. To fix this, you need to delete the longer keyword from the route-filter term and change the prefix length to /61 exact. This will match any prefix that falls within the /61 range. You also need to delete the export statement under protocols isis, because this will export all routes that match the policy statement to other IS-IS routers, which is not desired for a summary route.

IS-IS routers can form Level 1 or Level 2 adjacencies depending on their configuration and network topology. Level 1 routers are intra-area routers that share the same area address with their neighbors. Level 2 routers are inter-area routers that can connect different areas. Level 1-2 routers are both intra-area and inter-area routers that can form adjacencies with any other router.

In the exhibit, R1 and R2 are in different areas (49.0001 and 49.0002), so they cannot form a Level 1 adjacency. However, they can form a Level 2 adjacency if they are both configured as Level 1-2 routers. R1 is already configured as a Level 1-2 router, but R2 is configured as a Level 1 router only, because of the level 1 disable command under the lo0.0 interface. This command disables Level 2 routing on the loopback interface, which is used as the router ID for IS-IS.

Therefore, to establish a Level 1 adjacency between R1 and R2, the level 1 disable command under the R2 protocols isis interface lo0.0 hierarchy must be removed. This will enable Level 2 routing on R2 and allow it to form a Level 2 adjacency with R1.

To allow Site 1 to access three VLANs that are located in Site 2 and Site 3, you need to configure three L2VPN routing instances on PE-1, one for each VLAN. Each L2VPN routing instance will have a different VLAN ID and a different VNI for VXLAN encapsulation. Each L2VPN routing instance will also have a different vrf-target export value to identify which VPN routes belong to which VLAN. This way, PE-1 can forward traffic from Site 1 to Site 2 and Site 3 based on the VLAN tags and VNIs.

To transport IPv6 traffic over an IPv4-based MPLS network using BGP, you need to configure two address families: family inet6 labeled-unicast and family inet6 unicast. The former is used to exchange IPv6 routes with MPLS labels between PE routers, and the latter is used to exchange IPv6 routes without labels between PE and CE routers. The mpis ipv6-tunneling command enables the PE routers to encapsulate the IPv6 packets with an MPLS label stack and an IPv4 header before sending them over the MPLS network.

This is an EVPN Type-2 route, also called a MAC/IP advertisement route, that is used to advertise host IP and MAC address information to other VTEPs in an EVPN network. The route type field in the EVPN NLRI has a value of 2, indicating a Type-2 route. The device advertising this route into EVPN is 192.168.101.5, which is the IP address of the VTEP that learned the host information from the local CE device. This IP address is carried in the MPLS label field of the route as part of the VXLAN encapsulation.

The route distinguisher (RD) is a BGP attribute that is used to create unique VPN IPv4 prefixes for each VPN in an MPLS network. The RD is a 64-bit value that consists of two parts: an administrator field and an assigned number field. The administrator field can be an AS number or an IP address, and the assigned number field can be any arbitrary value chosen by the administrator. The RD is prepended to the IPv4 prefix to create a VPN IPv4 prefix that can be advertised across the MPLS network without causing any overlap or conflict with other VPNs. In this question, we have two PE routers (PE-1 and PE-2) that are connected to two CE devices (CE-1 and CE-2) respectively. PE-1 and PE-2 are configured with VRFs named Customer-A and Customer-B respectively. 

amplification attacks are a type of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that exploit the characteristics of certain protocols to amplify the traffic sent to a victim. For example, an attacker can send a small DNS query with a spoofed source IP address to a DNS server, which will reply with a much larger response to the victim. This way, the attacker can generate a large amount of traffic with minimal resources.

One of the methods to protect against amplification attacks is destination-based Remote Triggered Black Hole (RTBH) filtering. This technique allows a network operator to drop traffic destined to a specific IP address or prefix at the edge of the network, thus preventing it from reaching the victim and consuming bandwidth and resources. RTBH filtering can be implemented using BGP to propagate a special route with a next hop of 192.0.2.1 (a reserved address) to the edge routers. Any traffic matching this route will be discarded by the edge routers.

The brackets [ ] in the AS path identify an AS set, which are groups of AS numbers in which the order does not matter. An AS set is used when BGP aggregates routes from different ASs into a single prefix. For example, if BGP aggregates routes 10.0.0.0/16 and 10.1.0.0/16 from AS 100 and AS 200, respectively, into a single prefix 10.0.0.0/15, then the AS path for this prefix will be [100 200]. An AS set reduces the length of the AS path and prevents routing loops.

OSPF uses different types of LSAs to describe different aspects of the network topology. Type 1 LSAs are also known as router LSAs, and they describe the links and interfaces of a router within an area. Type 3 LSAs are also known as summary LSAs, and they describe routes to networks outside an area but within the same autonomous system (AS). By default, OSPF will summarize routes from Type 1 LSAs into Type 3 LSAs when advertising them across area boundaries .

AToM (Any Transport over MPLS) is a framework that supports various Layer 2 transport types over an MPLS network core. One of the transport types supported by AToM is LDP Layer 2 circuit, which is a point-to-point Layer 2 connection that uses LDP for signaling and MPLS for forwarding. LDP Layer 2 circuit can support Layer 2 connectivity without using BGP and can be scalable and efficient by using a single MPLS LSP for multiple VPN connections. The customer can maintain all routing for their private network by using their own CE switches.

the default behavior for iBGP is to propagate EBGP-learned prefixes without changing the next-hop. This can cause issues if the next-hop is not reachable via the IGP. One solution is to use the next-hop self command on R4, which will change the next-hop attribute to its own loopback address. This way, R5 can reach the next-hop via the IGP and install the route in its routing table.

Another solution is to add the external interface prefix (120.0.4.16/30) to the IGP routing tables of R4 and R5. This will also make the next-hop reachable via the IGP and allow R5 to use the route. According to 2, this is a possible workaround for a pure IP network, but it may not work well for an MPLS network.

The reason why the route is being hidden is that R5 cannot reach the BGP next hop 10.0.0.1, which is the address of R1. R5 does not have a route to 10.0.0.0/24 in its routing table, and neither does R4. Therefore, R5 cannot resolve the BGP next hop and marks the route as hidden.

There are two solutions that will solve this problem:

• Option A: On R4, create a policy to change the BGP next hop to itself and apply it to IBGP as an export policy. This way, R5 will receive the route with a next hop of 172.16.1.2, which is reachable via the IGP. This solution is also known as next-hop-self1.
• Option B: Add the external interface prefix to the IGP routing tables. This way, R4 and R5 will learn a route to 10.0.0.0/24 via the IGP and be able to resolve the BGP next hop. This solution is also known as recursive lookup2.

Option C is not correct because adding the internal interface prefix to the BGP routing tables will not help R5 reach the BGP next hop 10.0.0.1.

Option D is not correct because changing the BGP next hop to 172.16.1.1 on R4 will not help R5 either, since R5 does not have a route to 172.16.1.1 in its routing table.

References: 1: Configuring Next-Hop-Self for IBGP Peers 2: Understanding Recursive Lookup

IS-IS is a link-state routing protocol that uses the Dijkstra algorithm to compute the shortest paths between nodes in a network. The Dijkstra algorithm maintains three data structures: a tree database, a candidate database, and a link-state database (LSDB). The tree database contains the nodes that have been visited and their shortest distances from the source node. The candidate database contains the nodes that have not been visited yet and their tentative distances from the source node. The LSDB contains the topology information of the network, such as the links and their costs.

The Dijkstra algorithm works as follows:

• The local router moves its own local tuples into the tree database. A tuple consists of a node ID, a distance, and a parent node ID. The local router’s tuple has a distance of zero and no parent node.
• The local router moves its neighbors’ tuples into the candidate database. The neighbors’ tuples have distances equal to the costs of the links to them and parent node IDs equal to the local router’s node ID.
• The local router selects the tuple with the lowest distance from the candidate database and moves it to the tree database. This tuple becomes the current node.
• The local router updates the distances of the current node’s neighbors in the candidate database by adding the current node’s distance to the link costs. If a shorter distance is found, the parent node ID is also updated.
• The algorithm repeats steps 3 and 4 until either the destination node is reached or the candidate database is empty.

BGP FlowSpec is a feature that extends the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) to enable routers to exchange traffic flow specifications, allowing for more precise control of network traffic. The BGP FlowSpec feature enables routers to advertise and receive information about specific flows in the network, such as those originating from a particular source or destined for a particular destination. Routers can then use this information to construct traffic filters that allow or deny packets of a certain type, rate limit flows, or perform other actions1. BGP FlowSpec can also help in filtering traffic and taking action against distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks by dropping the DDoS traffic or diverting it to an analyzer2. BGP FlowSpec rules are internally converted to equivalent Cisco Common Classification Policy Language (C3PL) representing corresponding match and action parameters2. Therefore, BGP FlowSpec uses dynamically created routing policies to protect a network from denial-of-service attacks.

References: 1: https://www.networkingsignal.com/what-is-bgp-flowspec/  2: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/ios-xml/ios/iproute_bgp/configuration/xe-16/irg-xe-16-book/bgp-flowspec-route-reflector-support.html