Cisco Certified Design Expert (CCDE) Intermediate Practice Exam: Medium Difficulty 2025

A financial services company is designing a new data center network that requires predictable convergence times and simplified operations. The network will support 500 application servers across 25 racks. The design must minimize Layer 2 domains while providing optimal east-west traffic flow. Which architecture best meets these requirements?

An enterprise is experiencing intermittent connectivity issues in their campus network. Analysis shows that some VLANs are spanning multiple distribution blocks, and occasional broadcast storms occur. The network uses traditional STP with default timers. What design change would best address these issues while maintaining redundancy?

A service provider is designing a backbone network connecting 20 PoPs across multiple regions. The design requires fast convergence, efficient use of bandwidth, and the ability to implement traffic engineering. MPLS will be used for services. Which IGP combination and design strategy is most appropriate?

A multinational corporation needs to implement a routing design between their headquarters (AS 65001) and three regional offices, each with their own AS numbers. Each regional office connects to headquarters via dual circuits. The design must prevent regional offices from becoming transit AS between headquarters and other regions. What BGP design element should be implemented?

An organization is designing DNS services for a hybrid cloud environment with on-premises data centers and multiple public cloud providers. The design must ensure name resolution works seamlessly across all environments while maintaining security and performance. What DNS architecture should be recommended?

A network design requires high availability for critical applications using load balancing across multiple data centers located 50km apart. The design must support active-active traffic distribution and provide sub-second failover. Both Layer 2 and Layer 3 connectivity exist between sites. What load balancing approach best meets these requirements?

A company is designing security for their network perimeter. They need to inspect encrypted traffic for threats while maintaining high performance for their 10Gbps internet connection. Users access both internal applications and SaaS services. What security architecture component should be prioritized in the design?

An enterprise is implementing a zero-trust security model for their campus network. The design must enforce policy based on user identity, device posture, and application accessed, regardless of network location. Which combination of technologies best supports this architecture?

A network operations team wants to implement automated network configuration management across 500 devices from multiple vendors. The solution must support rollback capabilities, configuration templating, and integration with their existing Git-based workflow. What approach best meets these requirements?

A service provider needs to design a solution for programmable network automation that allows customers to provision services through an API. The solution must abstract underlying network complexity and support integration with customer orchestration systems. What architectural approach should be used?