Question

Describe 3 examples of routing metrics that can be used to determine the best path for a network

Answer 1

Metrics for Determining the best path for a network:

• The best path for a particular network cannot be determined until and unless the network is completely analyzed. So, to analyze the network and the reach we need to concentrate on a few metrics which are as follows:
  • Hop:
    • It is one of the most important metrics that can be used to determine the best path for the network. It is used for measuring the distance which is based on the number of the networks that a datagram will traverse.
    • Whenever the router will forward in the datagram onto a particular segment the ho count will increase by one. If the network is going to be decided by the number of hops then it will not calculate the best part every time because it is not necessary that the path which takes less number of hops is the best path.
  • Bandwidth:
    • ​​​​​​​Bandwidth is used for measuring the terms of bits per second. The network links that will support higher transfer rates are being preferred over the network links which have lower transfer rates.
    • The bandwidth also becomes the most important metrics in order to get the shortest and best path for the network.
  • Delay:
    • ​​​​​​​It is also one of the most important elements of networking. It will normally represent the amount of time that is being taken by a router for processing and transmitting a datagram out of a particular interface.
    • The protocols that can be used for the metrics to determine the delay values for all the network links which comes along with the path end to end and must be considered by the path with the lowest delay to being a better route.

Hence, all these three metrics collectively can be used to identify the best path for a particular network.