What does Administrative Distance represent in routing?

• A. The trustworthiness of the route source; lower is more preferred.
• B. The speed of the path.
• C. The number of hops to the destination.
• D. Administrative Distance represents the trustworthiness of the route source; lower is more preferred.

Answer: (D)

Administrative Distance is a measure of how trustworthy a route source is. Routers use this value to decide which route to install when multiple routing protocols advertise paths to the same destination. A lower distance means the source is more trusted, so its route is preferred even if another route has a shorter path metric from a less trusted source. The actual path metrics (cost, hops, bandwidth) matter only after the AD has determined which source wins. If two routes share the same AD, then the protocols’ metrics and other tie-breakers come into play to choose the final route.