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2.0 Switching and Network Access

Troubleshooting Tools Practice Questions

New in CCNA v2.0

Extended ping, traceroute, show logging, and packet capture for Layer 2 and Layer 3 connectivity.

CCNA v2.0 objective 2.4 · objective map

Author-reviewed by LabFabric · 25 September 2026 · Report a content issue

One solved question, so you can see how these are marked

A router has two interfaces on different networks. An engineer wants to test whether a remote host replies when the ping originates from the router's LAN interface address instead of the outgoing interface. Which IOS feature accomplishes this?

Extended ping, using the source keyword or the extended dialog

'ping 203.0.113.9 source 192.168.1.1' (or the extended dialog started by typing ping alone in privileged EXEC) sets the source address or interface. This tests the return path to a specific subnet, which a default ping cannot.

Every question in the set below is marked like this. The answers stay hidden until you pick one.

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All 10 Troubleshooting Tools questions in this set

Answers and explanations appear when you work through the set above.

  1. An IOS ping returns '!!!!!'. What does each exclamation point mean?

    • An ICMP echo reply was received
    • The echo request timed out
    • A router along the path reported the destination unreachable
    • The packet was too large and could not be fragmented

  2. An IOS ping returns '.....' for every probe. What does a period mean?

    • No reply was received before the timeout
    • The destination returned an echo reply
    • The packet was fragmented
    • The destination is a broadcast address

  3. How does an IOS traceroute discover each hop to a destination?

    • It sends probes with increasing TTL values and reads the ICMP time-exceeded messages returned by each router
    • It reads each router's routing table using SNMP
    • It floods a broadcast that every router answers
    • It sends a single packet with a record-route table

  4. A traceroute shows replies from hops 1 to 3, then only '* * *' for every later hop. Which conclusion is most reasonable?

    • Traffic stops being answered after hop 3, so the next device may be filtering probes, or a route or return path may be missing
    • The destination is working perfectly
    • The local router has no default gateway
    • DNS is failing

  5. Which Windows command performs the equivalent of an IOS traceroute?

    • tracert
    • pathping -r
    • route print
    • netstat -r

  6. Which command shows the current contents of the router's log buffer, so an engineer can see recent link state changes?

    • show logging
    • show interfaces status
    • show version
    • show processes

  7. An engineer needs to see whether a server's TCP handshake completes and which packets are dropped. Which tool provides the most direct evidence?

    • A packet capture analysed in a tool such as Wireshark
    • show clock detail
    • show ip protocols
    • show cdp neighbors

  8. A switch port must mirror traffic from a server port to a laptop running a packet analyser. Which feature does this?

    • SPAN (port mirroring)
    • Storm control
    • EtherChannel
    • PortFast

  9. Ping from R1 to a host in a remote LAN works with the default source but fails when the source is R1's LAN interface. What does this most likely indicate?

    • The remote network has no route back to R1's LAN subnet
    • R1's interface is administratively down
    • The remote host has no IP address
    • The ping command is not supported on IOS

  10. Which command lists the MAC addresses a switch has learned and the port each was learned on, to help find where a host is connected?

    • show mac address-table
    • show arp
    • show ip route
    • show vlan brief