Talk:Hop (telecommunications)

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Hop (telecommunications) vs. Hop (networking)[edit]

As written, Hop (telecommunications) describes a transition between routers, a link between routers (analogous to a "hop" in a travel itinerary), while Hop (networking) describes a transfer through or across a router, a "bridge" between transport segments connected to a router. Both could be correct in context, but the cited reference in Hop (networking) is weak and there is no cited reference in Hop (telecommunications). If this term is in practice used in two different ways, then I think that the distinction should be made in a single article and not in two, but until then I think that the articles should remain wiki-linked in their respective See also sections so that readers can be aware of the discrepancy. (And, to bug you and me until we resolve this discrepancy.) Yappy2bhere (talk) 01:52, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see a discrepancy between the third example of "hop" in this article and the definition given in the lede of Hop (networking). In both articles, a hop is the transfer of a data packet from one router to the next router on that packet's path.

From Hop (telecommunications): a hop is the step from one router to the next, on the path of a packet on any communications network.

From Hop (networking): Each time packets are passed to the next router a hop occurs.

Note that in both cases, a "hop" is an event experienced by a particular data packet. Different packets will follow different routes (that is what a router does).

Do you still see a discrepancy? Am I missing something? --Srleffler (talk) 04:40, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You are, but that's my fault - the "cited reference" I spoke of is in Hop count, not here. Briefly, if you have n routers between 2 endpoints, you have n+1 hops per Hop (telecommunications) and only n hops per Hop count.

Hop (networking) dithers in its use of the term. The lead claims to count links when in fact it counts routers ("Each time packets are passed to the next router", which counts the first link, from the source endpoint to the first router, but not the last link, from the last router to the destination endpoint). #Hop count follows Hop count ("hop count n means... n gateways"), and #Hop limit assumes that "hop" is already well-defined.

Time to live#IP packets can be read either way - it doesn't specify whether a router tests for TTL=0 before or after decrementing the value. (Though it may be inferred from this.) Even RFC 1058, cited in Hop count, uses the term without defining it.

So, my intent was simply to entangle the articles until I had time to sort this out properly. Yappy2bhere (talk) 06:14, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

We have a list of 3 uses. 1 is supported by a reference. 2 is unsupported. 3 is supported in Hop (networking). There have been some recent additions to 3 here and I have removed those because they are already covered in Hop (networking). This page is awkwardly functioning as sort of a disambiguation page. Hopefully that will eventually resolve itself as it exits stub status. ~Kvng (talk) 15:27, 10 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]