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

Long-prefixes, also known as more specific routes, play a significant role in the Cisco Express Forwarding (CEF) process. In networking, particularly with CEF, the Forwarding Information Base (FIB) is utilized to dictate how packets are forwarded based on IP address routing.

Long-prefixes are included in the FIB because they provide detailed and specific routing information compared to shorter prefixes. This inclusion ensures that CEF can forward packets more accurately to their intended destinations. When a router encounters an incoming packet, it checks the FIB for the longest match to the packet's destination IP address. Hence, with long-prefixes present in the FIB, CEF can make more precise forwarding decisions, improving both routing efficiency and performance.

The other options reflect a misunderstanding of how long-prefixes operate within CEF. For instance, less specific routes or least specific routes do not provide the granularity needed for accurate forwarding, while excluding long-prefixes from route calculations would undermine the whole routing process. Thus, the role of long-prefixes in enhancing the accuracy of routing decisions through their representation in the FIB is essential for efficient network performance.