Question 590
A fictional service-provider team at Winterfield Utilities is reviewing a network change window. The finding is: Two tenant services share a physical switch but should maintain distinct Layer 2 address-learning domains. Which networking principle most accurately explains the observed failure?
Explanation
Correct Answer
Virtual-switch routing instances provide separate bridge contexts; similar VLAN identifiers alone do not imply shared L2 forwarding. That is the specific distinction behind the observed outage. The targeted fix is to place each tenant's ports and VLANs in the intended virtual-switch context and verify independent bridge learning. Applied here, the relevant facts are: Two tenant services share a physical switch but should maintain distinct Layer 2 address-learning domains. The question asks which networking principle most accurately explains the observed failure.
Incorrect Answers
Although provider Q-in-Q tagging needs this consideration, the failure at issue has a different cause. Virtual-switch routing instances provide separate bridge contexts; similar VLAN identifiers alone do not imply shared L2 forwarding.
This principle matters when troubleshooting OSPF point-to-point topology, but using it here mistakes a different failure mode for virtual-switch instance isolation. The relevant distinction is: virtual-switch routing instances provide separate bridge contexts; similar VLAN identifiers alone do not imply shared L2 forwarding.
Although VLAN access trunk distinction needs this consideration, the failure at issue has a different cause. Virtual-switch routing instances provide separate bridge contexts; similar VLAN identifiers alone do not imply shared L2 forwarding.