What is the purpose of a route map in the context of routing and policy?

• A. To set criteria for route manipulation (permit/deny) and to influence redistribution and next-hop decisions
• B. To encrypt routing updates
• C. To measure link utilization
• D. To rename interfaces

Answer: (A)

Route maps encode routing policy by selecting routes and applying actions. They let you specify match criteria for routes (like prefixes, route attributes, or protocol origin) and then decide what to do with those routes—permit or deny them, and set attributes that influence how they are redistributed or the next-hop and other routing decisions. This gives precise control over which routes get advertised into other protocols, how traffic is steered, and how route attributes are modified to achieve desired behavior. In practice, you attach a route map to a routing process or redistribution statement to enforce these policies, enabling filtering, redistribution control, and targeted next-hop adjustments.

Encrypting routing updates isn’t what route maps do; that’s handled by security features for routing protocols. Measuring link utilization belongs to monitoring or performance analysis. Renaming interfaces is a basic interface configuration task and not related to route policy.