What is used to choose the best path on a virtual router that has two or more different routes to the same destination?

Question

Options

• AMetric
• BSource zone
• CAdministrative distance
• DPath monitoring

• A
  14% (7)
• B
  8% (4)
• C
  76% (38)
• D
  2% (1)

Explanation

Administrative distance (AD) is the tie-breaker a virtual router uses when it receives routes to the same destination from different sources (e.g., a static route competing with an OSPF-learned route). Each routing source has a pre-assigned AD value (static = 10, OSPF = 110, BGP = 200 on Palo Alto), and the route with the lowest AD wins and is installed in the routing table.

Why the distractors are wrong:

• A. Metric - metric compares paths within a single protocol (e.g., OSPF cost), not across different route sources; AD is evaluated first.
• B. Source zone - zones are a firewall/security policy concept used for traffic inspection, not routing decisions.
• D. Path monitoring - this checks whether a next-hop is reachable/healthy, which can trigger failover, but it does not rank competing routes.

Memory tip: Think of AD as a credibility score - the lower the number, the more the router trusts that source. Static routes are highly trusted (low AD); BGP is least trusted (high AD). "Lower AD = more authority."

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