Question

Difficulty: MediumTroubleshooting Routing, Default Gateways, and ACLs

An infrastructure engineer is analyzing network logs to determine why an application server located at 10.50.20.1510.50.20.15 cannot transmit syslog data to a remote log collector at 172.18.4.50172.18.4.50. The collector receives log streams using UDP port 514514. The engineer inspects the active router interface access control list (ACL):

text
Extended IP access list ENTERPRISE_OUT
10 permit tcp 10.50.20.0 0.0.0.63 host 172.18.4.50 eq 514
20 permit ip 10.50.20.0 0.0.0.63 10.50.0.0 0.0.255.255
30 deny ip any any

Which of the following identifies the root cause of this connectivity failure?

  1. The access control list specifies TCP port 514 instead of UDP, causing syslog traffic to miss Rule 10 and fall through to the deny rule.Answer
  2. B
    The wildcard mask 0.0.0.63 restricts the host address range so that IP address 10.50.20.15 is excluded from matching Rule 10.
  3. C
    The application server and log collector reside on different IP subnets, preventing packets from reaching the router's default gateway interface.
  4. D
    Destination port 514 is reserved for HTTPS traffic and is blocked by default on standard Layer 3 ACL configurations.

Answer

The access control list specifies TCP port 514 instead of UDP, causing syslog traffic to miss Rule 10 and fall through to the deny rule.
Standard syslog logging services utilize UDP port 514. In the configured access control list, Rule 10 explicitly permits TCP traffic on port 514. Because transport layer protocol matching is strict, UDP syslog packets miss Rule 10 as well as Rule 20 (which targets a different subnet block), falling through to Rule 30 where they are denied.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the transport protocol and port used by the service
Syslog standard protocol operates over UDP port 514.
Correct ACL matching depends on matching both transport protocol (UDP vs TCP) and port number.
2
Evaluate ACL rules top-down against the traffic specifications
UDP traffic from 10.50.20.15 to 172.18.4.50 on port 514 is evaluated against Rule 10 (permit tcp...), which fails due to protocol mismatch. Rule 20 permits traffic to 10.50.0.0/16, which does not match 172.18.4.50.
ACLs process sequentially until the first matching statement.
3
Determine the ultimate fate of unmatched packets
The traffic reaches Rule 30 (deny ip any any) and is dropped.
Unmatched traffic falls through to explicit or implicit deny rules.

Key Concept

ACL Transport Protocol Mismatch & Sequential Processing
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