Cisco Certified Network Professional 2025 – 400 Free Practice Questions to Pass the Exam

In load balancing environments, it is crucial to maintain the integrity and order of packets, especially for protocols like TCP that are sensitive to the sequence of data being transmitted. TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) establishes a connection-oriented session, which means it requires that data is delivered in the order it was sent.

When packets arrive out of order due to being distributed across multiple paths for load balancing, they need to be resequenced to ensure that they are delivered to the receiving application in the correct order. This process involves buffering the packets and waiting for missing segments to arrive so that all packets can be presented in the proper sequence, maintaining the integrity of the data stream. This ensures reliable and correct data transmission, which is one of the main features of TCP.

The other options do not accurately reflect how TCP performs in load balancing scenarios. For instance, simply dropping out-of-order packets would lead to data loss and undermine the reliability TCP is designed to provide, while combining packets into larger packets or prioritizing by size could alter the nature of the transmission and may not adhere to TCP’s operational protocols. Therefore, properly sequencing and resequencing packets as needed in load balancing setups is essential for effective TCP communications.