When choosing between two routes with different administrative distances, which route is preferred?

• A. The route with the lower administrative distance
• B. The route with the higher administrative distance
• C. The route with the larger hop count
• D. The route learned via dynamic routing only

Answer: (A)

Administrative distance measures how trustworthy a route’s source is. When two routes to the same destination exist, the router chooses the one from the source with the smaller administrative distance, because that source is considered more reliable. If a static route (low AD) and a dynamic routing route (higher AD) both exist, the static route wins and is installed in the routing table. For example, a static route with AD 1 will be preferred over an OSPF route with AD 110. If both sources had the same AD, then the router would use the protocol’s internal metric (like cost or hop count) to decide.

So, the route with the lower administrative distance is the best choice. The other ideas don’t fit because higher AD means less trust, hop count is just a metric within a protocol, and simply being learned via dynamic routing isn’t enough without considering AD.