Topic summary
Hop count
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Hop (computer networking).
Hop count
In wired networks, the hop count refers to the number of networks or network devices through which data passes between source and destination (depending on routing protocol, this may include the source/destination, that is, the first hop is counted as hop 0 or hop 1). Thus, hop count is a rough measure of distance between two hosts. For a routing protocol using 1-origin hop counts (such as RIP), a hop count of n means that n networks separate the source host from the destination host. Other protocols such as DHCP use the term "hop" to refer to the number of times a message has been forwarded.