Cisco 300-420 Exam With Confidence Using Practice Dumps

NETCONF supports XML, while RESTCONF supports both XML and JSON. Cisco programmability documentation describes NETCONF as an XML-based protocol that exchanges RPC requests and replies such as get, get-config, and edit-config using XML encoding. NETCONF is tightly aligned with YANG-modeled data, but the protocol message format itself is XML. RESTCONF exposes YANG-modeled data through an HTTP or HTTPS API and can represent payloads in XML or JSON. Cisco DevNet material commonly summarizes the comparison as NETCONF equals XML, while RESTCONF equals XML or JSON. That is why option D is accurate. Option A is wrong because NETCONF does not use JSON in the same way RESTCONF does. Option B is incomplete because RESTCONF is not limited to JSON. Option C reverses the protocol encodings. This distinction matters in automation design because tool selection, content type, parsing, and API workflows differ by protocol. Reference topics: NETCONF, RESTCONF, YANG, XML encoding, JSON encoding, model-driven programmability.

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN separates orchestration from management, control, and data forwarding. The orchestration-plane function is provided by vBond, which authenticates WAN Edge devices and helps establish secure connectivity between edges and controllers. In Cisco design terms, vBond is also the NAT traversal facilitator because it allows devices sitting behind NAT to discover reachable public and private address information and form the correct control connections. These two functions match the options for primary authentication point and NAT traversal facilitation. Centralized provisioning, troubleshooting, monitoring, and template-based configuration belong to vManage, the management plane. Route and policy distribution belongs to vSmart, the control plane, through OMP. Zero Touch Provisioning is part of the onboarding workflow, but the question asks for orchestration-plane functions, not the broader provisioning service. A sound SD-WAN design should deploy redundant vBond instances, ensure DNS reachability to them, and validate firewall rules so DTLS/TLS control connections can be established reliably across Internet and private transports. Reference topics: Cisco SD-WAN architecture, vBond orchestration, control connections, NAT traversal.

MSTP is the correct spanning-tree choice for a Layer 2 design with many logical ports, multiple trunked VLANs, and a subsecond convergence requirement. Rapid PVST+ provides rapid convergence, but it creates a separate spanning-tree instance for every VLAN. With 30 VLANs on trunks and hundreds of active ports, the number of logical STP ports can grow quickly and increase CPU and memory load. MSTP maps many VLANs into a smaller number of spanning-tree instances while still using rapid convergence behavior based on IEEE 802.1w principles. This makes it more scalable for large Layer 2 domains than PVST+ or Rapid PVST+ when many VLANs are present. CST provides a single instance but lacks the flexibility and convergence characteristics expected in modern enterprise designs. The design needs both scalability and fast convergence, and MSTP is the standards-based protocol that best satisfies both requirements. Reference topics: MSTP, Rapid STP, logical STP ports, VLAN-to-instance mapping, Layer 2 scalability, convergence.