This lab example explores a Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN feature called End-to-End Path Tracking. You will see why it matters when you design overlay topologies, especially when traffic must traverse intermediate hops like regional hubs, border hubs or other transit points.

This hands-on example does more than just introduce the feature. It also highlights some key points about OMP that many engineers miss at first. In particular, we explain how OMP reacts to direct failures (like a tunnel going down) versus indirect failures (when the tunnel stays up, but something upstream in the end-to-end path is broken). This helps you understand why a path can look healthy at the transport level, yet still be unusable, and how end-to-end tracking helps.