300-420 Question 215
Single answerA company is designing its enterprise network with a single-homed connection to a service provider. Which design consideration is most important when using a single-homed topology?
- A
Implementing BGP for failover and load balancing
- B
Ensuring high availability through an additional ISP connection
- C
Planning for redundancy within the LAN to mitigate ISP outages
- D
Assessing the impact of a single point of failure for the WAN connection
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: D
Explanation
In a single-homed design, the enterprise network connects to only one ISP through a single connection, making the WAN link a single point of failure. It is crucial to assess the risks associated with this limitation and plan accordingly, such as implementing compensatory measures like local redundancy or alternative failover strategies. The other options either fall outside the scope of single-homed topologies or address unrelated concerns.
- A. Incorrect.
BGP is typically used in multi-homed or dual-homed setups to provide failover and load balancing. In a single-homed design, BGP would not be applicable for redundancy.
- B. Incorrect.
While adding an additional ISP connection is a good strategy for fault tolerance, it changes the topology to dual-homed or multi-homed, which is outside the scope of a single-homed design.
- C. Incorrect.
Redundancy within the LAN is important but does not address the primary concern of a single-homed topology, which is the lack of WAN redundancy.
- D. Correct.
A single-homed topology inherently has a single point of failure at the WAN connection. Understanding and mitigating the impact of this limitation is critical for designing a robust network.