What is Hop?

What is Hop?

A hop represents one portion of the path between source and destination. When communicating over the Internet, for example, data passes through a number of intermediate devices (like routers) rather than flowing directly over a single wire. Each such device causes data to "hop" between one point-to-point network connection and another. If you have used the trace route command the output of that shows the hopes on the way to destination.