A network engineer must run a core Cisco Nexus 9500 Series Switch as a POAP server for all top-of-rack Cisco Nexus switches. Which two network functions must run to provide the POAP service? (Choose…

Question

Options

• ADNS
• BPXE
• CBOOTP
• DTFTP
• EDHCP

• B
  3% (1)
• C
  3% (1)
• D
  94% (31)

Explanation

POAP (Power On Auto Provisioning) works by having a newly booted switch send a DHCP broadcast to obtain an IP address - the DHCP response also carries the address of a script/config server via DHCP options (Option 66/67). The switch then uses TFTP to download the provisioning script and configuration files from that server. These two services form the complete POAP chain: DHCP for discovery and TFTP for delivery.

Why the distractors are wrong:

• A (DNS): Not needed - DHCP passes the TFTP server as a raw IP address, so no hostname resolution is required.
• B (PXE): PXE is an Intel standard for booting x86 machines over a network; it has no role in Cisco switch provisioning.
• C (BOOTP): BOOTP is DHCP's older predecessor. POAP specifically leverages modern DHCP with extended options - BOOTP alone lacks the option fields POAP depends on.

Memory tip: Think of POAP as a two-step "find and fetch" - DHCP finds the server, TFTP fetches the files. Everything else (DNS, PXE, BOOTP) belongs to different protocols or different eras.

No community discussion yet for this question.