What is RIP’s maximum hop count and what does a hop count of 16 indicate?

• A. Maximum is 15; 16 indicates the destination is unreachable.
• B. Maximum is 20; 21 indicates unreachable.
• C. Maximum is 255; 256 indicates unreachable.
• D. Maximum is 1; 2 indicates unreachable.

Answer: (A)

RIP uses hop count as its distance metric, and the hop count field is an 8-bit value where 16 is reserved to mean infinity. That means a route is considered reachable only if it has a hop count from 1 to 15; a hop count of 16 signals that the destination cannot be reached via RIP. So the maximum valid hop count is 15, and a value of 16 indicates the destination is unreachable. The other numbers shown don’t fit RIP’s metric rules: they’re not the defined maximum, and a smaller value like 1 would simply mean the destination is one hop away, not the maximum.