Which field indicates how many hops a packet may traverse before it is discarded by a router?

Which field indicates how many hops a packet may traverse before it is discarded by a router?

• A. Time to Live (TTL)
• B. Session splicing
• C. Fragmentation
• D. Unicode

Answer: (A)

Time to Live (TTL) is the field that sets how many routers a packet may pass through before it is discarded. Each time a router handles the packet, it decreases TTL by one. When TTL reaches zero, the packet is dropped to prevent endless looping, and an ICMP Time Exceeded message may be returned to the sender. This mechanism helps detect routing loops and bounds the packet’s lifetime. The other terms don’t apply here: fragmentation relates to splitting packets to fit the network MTU, Unicode is a text encoding standard, and session splicing isn’t a standard IP concept.

Time to Live (TTL) is the field that sets how many routers a packet may pass through before it is discarded. Each time a router handles the packet, it decreases TTL by one. When TTL reaches zero, the packet is dropped to prevent endless looping, and an ICMP Time Exceeded message may be returned to the sender. This mechanism helps detect routing loops and bounds the packet’s lifetime. The other terms don’t apply here: fragmentation relates to splitting packets to fit the network MTU, Unicode is a text encoding standard, and session splicing isn’t a standard IP concept.