Cisco Certified Network Professional 2026 – 400 Free Practice Questions to Pass the Exam

VTP (VLAN Trunking Protocol) pruning is primarily designed to enhance the efficiency of network traffic by reducing unnecessary broadcast traffic. When pruning is enabled, VTP ensures that VLAN-specific traffic is only sent across trunk links to those switches that are actually using the VLAN. This means that if a particular VLAN is not in use on a switch, the traffic related to that VLAN will not traverse that trunk link, significantly decreasing the volume of broadcast and multicast traffic on the network.

By limiting the broadcast traffic to only relevant VLANs, VTP pruning helps optimize bandwidth utilization and improves the overall performance of the network, especially in environments with many VLANs. This is particularly beneficial in larger networks where excessive broadcast traffic can lead to congestion and degrade network performance.

The other options do not accurately describe the primary function of VTP pruning. Blocking traffic on all VLANs would be too restrictive and counterproductive, as it would prevent all communications, including those that are necessary. Blocking traffic from unknown hosts pertains to security measures rather than traffic optimization. Propagating VLAN information to all switches is a core function of VTP itself but does not relate to the specific goal of reducing broadcast traffic that comes with VTP pruning.