What routing metric uses available traffic capacity of a link?

• A. Hop Count
• B. Bandwidth
• C. Delay
• D. Reliability

Answer: (B)

Bandwidth is the routing metric that reflects how much traffic a link can carry, its capacity. When a router evaluates possible paths, it generally favors links with higher bandwidth because they can move more data per second and are less likely to become bottlenecks under load. This makes bandwidth the best choice for capturing the available capacity of a link and guiding the path selection toward routes that can handle the traffic volume. Hop count only counts the number of hops and ignores capacity; delay measures time to deliver but not the amount of data that can be pushed through; reliability looks at the likelihood of successful delivery, not how much data a link can carry.