Question 330
A fictional service-provider team at Meadowrise Internet is reviewing a virtual-router integration. The finding is: A bridging loop causes the same source MAC to appear alternately on multiple interfaces, but operators assume it is a routing protocol fault. Which focused engineering action would best correct the fault?
Explanation
Correct Answer
Inspect bridge MAC learning, move events, and the Layer 2 topology; remove unintended loop or incorrect forwarding path. This treats the fault shown by Meadowrise Internet: ethernet bridges learn destination forwarding from observed source MAC addresses; unstable topology can continually invalidate learned ports. Confirm success when the MAC address stabilizes on the expected interface and unicast forwarding avoids repeated flooding.
Incorrect Answers
Align the explicitly approved native and untagged VLAN behavior at both ends and verify tagged versus untagged traffic. Its normal acceptance signal would be untagged frames map to the intended VLAN on both devices while explicitly tagged VLAN traffic remains isolated. Here the deciding check is different: the MAC address stabilizes on the expected interface and unicast forwarding avoids repeated flooding.
Enable compatible OSPFv3 IPv6 operation on the intended peers and validate neighbor and route state. Its normal acceptance signal would be the expected OSPFv3 neighbor reaches Full and IPv6 routes appear with intended next hops. Here the deciding check is different: the MAC address stabilizes on the expected interface and unicast forwarding avoids repeated flooding.
Place each tenant's ports and VLANs in the intended virtual-switch context and verify independent bridge learning. That could help in a case involving virtual-switch instance isolation. This failure instead depends on MAC address learning and moves; ethernet bridges learn destination forwarding from observed source MAC addresses; unstable topology can continually invalidate learned ports.