Which Cisco SD-WAN feature dynamically reroutes traffic when packet loss exceeds SLA thresholds?

• A. Route summarization
• B. NAT translation
• C. App-aware routing
• D. OSPF sham links

Answer: (C)

App-aware routing is designed to meet application performance requirements by monitoring real-time metrics on every available transport path and making routing decisions at the granularity of individual applications. It continuously tracks how an app is performing across each path—looking at metrics like packet loss, latency, and jitter—and compares them to defined SLA thresholds. When the measured loss on a path for a particular application exceeds its SLA, the SD-WAN policy automatically shifts that application's traffic to a healthier path, such as moving from a congested broadband link to a more reliable MPLS path. This dynamic rerouting happens while the session continues, and if the chosen path improves, traffic can be steered back as appropriate. This per-app, SLA-driven path selection is what enables consistent application performance across diverse transports.

Route summarization, NAT translation, and OSPF sham links serve different purposes: route summarization reduces routing table size, NAT translation handles address translation, and OSPF sham links are a routing technique for fooling or manipulating underlay routing. None of these provide the SLA-based, per-app dynamic rerouting behavior that app-aware routing delivers.