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

The correct answer is CEF, which stands for Cisco Express Forwarding. CEF is a highly efficient, hardware-based routing mechanism used primarily in Cisco routers. It enhances the efficiency of packet forwarding by using a two-table system: the Forwarding Information Base (FIB) and the adjacency table.

The FIB is essentially a copy of the routing table that is optimized for fast lookups, effectively allowing the router to make quick decisions on where to send packets. The adjacency table maintains neighbor and Layer 2 information, enabling the router to make forwarding decisions without needing to access the routing table multiple times for every packet.

This hardware-based approach allows for high performance and scalability, as CEF reduces CPU load and increases the packet forwarding speed, which is crucial in environments with high traffic.

In contrast, the other protocols listed serve different purposes. HSRP is primarily used for providing redundancy and failover between multiple routers but does not handle routing itself. OSPF is a routing protocol that calculates the best path for routing packets but does not optimize forwarding in the same way as CEF. BGP, although a dynamic routing protocol that is finely tunable for internet routing needs, is not focused on hardware-based packet forwarding efficiency. Therefore,