Which three networking architectures is the Cisco ACI architecture based on? (Choose three.)

The leaf-and-spine architecture forms the physical foundation of the ACI fabric, providing a highly scalable, high-performance, and resilient network topology for data center connectivity.

While ACI supports multicast traffic, 'multicast gateway' is not considered one of the fundamental architectural principles upon which the entire ACI fabric is based.

The Cisco APIC (Application Policy Infrastructure Controller) acts solely as the control plane, defining and distributing policies to the fabric's data plane switches without being involved in forwarding any user traffic.

ACI utilizes a distributed, policy-driven mapping database, but 'software-based mapping database lookup' is an incomplete description, as forwarding decisions are primarily hardware-based and policy-informed.

Cisco ACI supports zero-touch provisioning, allowing new leaf and spine switches to automatically discover the APIC and receive their complete configuration, including loopbacks, Layer 3 links, and routing settings, upon being connected to the fabric.

ACI uses VXLAN for overlay networking, but its forwarding is primarily hardware-based by leaf switches using a mapping database to determine VXLAN tunnel endpoints, not 'Host-based forwarding that provides IP-to-VLAN tunnel endpoint'.