Two companies successfully merged.

•The issue described is a network bottleneck due to increased traffic after a merger.

•A collapsed core architecture consolidates the core and distribution layers into a single layer to improve efficiency and reduce latency.

•Until the 40GB switch is acquired, Link Aggregation (LAG) (IEEE 802.3ad / LACP) can be used to combine multiple physical links into a single logical link, increasing bandwidth and reducing bottlenecks.

•FHRP (First Hop Redundancy Protocol) (A) is used for gateway redundancy, not link aggregation.

•Route selection metric changes (B) help with routing decisions but don’t address physical link congestion.

•Load balancers (C) distribute traffic for applications, not network links.

????Reference: CompTIA Network+ N10-009 Official Documentation – Network Architecture and Performance Optimization.