<P> Routing term used for the next gateway to which packets should be forwarded along the path to their final destination . One technique to make content of a routing table smaller is called next - hop routing . </P> <P> A routing table usually contains the IP address of a destination network and the IP address of the next gateway (next hop) along the path to the final network destination . Using a routing table to store a next hop for each' known' destination is called next - hop forwarding . Therefore, a given gateway only knows one step along the path, not the complete path to a destination . It is also key to know that the next hops listed in a routing table are on networks to which the gateway is directly connected to . </P> <P> The ping or traceroute commands can be used to see how many router hops it takes to get from one host to another . </P> <P> Hop counts are often useful to find faults in a network, or to discover if routing is indeed correct . Network utilities like ping can be used to determine the hop count to a specific destination . Ping generates packets that include a field reserved for the hop count . </P>

The movement from one network to another is called a hop