Service edge: Only the upper half responds
The incident
Internal API clients and an independent observability edge share a transit network with an isolated partner segment. A metro ring feeds a separate aggregation router and service gateway rather than attaching the service directly to the ring. Addresses in the lower half of the primary service subnet fail, while .200 responds. The secondary service is unaffected. Investigate internal API transport from R1: 10.171.96.0/24 to 10.171.106.0/24 (TCP/8443), and 10.171.97.0/24 to 10.171.107.0/24 (TCP/443).
Your objective
Restore both authorized service transports and return reachability, including clients and service hosts in both halves of the primary subnet. Keep R2 blocked from both service transports, keep SSH blocked to both service subnets, and preserve monitoring between R1 and R3. Do not change physical topology or addressing. These are network forwarding checks, not application-level transactions.
The network
Link addressing (6)
- R1 R2
10.171.112.0/30 - R2 R3
10.171.113.0/30 - R3 R4
10.171.114.0/30 - R4 R1
10.171.115.0/30 - R4 R5
10.171.116.0/30 - R5 R6
10.171.117.0/30
What you’ll practice
Interview exercises are inspired by common industry competencies. They are not proprietary interview questions.