Which term describes the measure used by routing protocols to evaluate and compare possible paths to a destination?

• A. IP address
• B. Metric
• C. Subnet
• D. TTL

Answer: (B)

The measure routing protocols use to evaluate and compare possible paths is called metric. A metric assigns a value to each potential path to a destination, reflecting its desirability, and the route with the best metric is chosen. Different protocols define this value differently: for example, RIP uses hop count as its metric, while OSPF uses a cost based on link bandwidth, and EIGRP uses a composite metric. The other terms don’t describe path quality: an IP address identifies a device, a subnet defines a network segment, and TTL is the IP header field that limits how many hops a packet can traverse to prevent looping.