Which Windows utility combines ping and tracert functionality to collect hop-by-hop statistics over time?

Which Windows utility combines ping and tracert functionality to collect hop-by-hop statistics over time?

• A. arp
• B. nmap
• C. Light Meter
• D. pathping

Answer: (D)

This question tests understanding of a Windows tool that blends route tracing with ongoing per-hop measurements to diagnose where along the path packets are delayed or dropped. Pathping does this: it first discovers the path to the destination in a traceroute-like fashion, then for each hop along that path it sends a series of pings and records latency and loss over time. The result is a hop-by-hop report showing, for every router on the path, how much latency is observed and what fraction of packets were lost through that hop. This makes it possible to pinpoint whether problems are near a particular router or link, rather than just knowing the overall end-to-end round-trip time. The other tools perform different tasks: arp maps IP addresses to MAC addresses on the local network; nmap scans networks to identify hosts and services; Light Meter isn’t a standard Windows networking utility for this purpose. So pathping is the one that combines ping-like measurements with trace-like path information over time.

This question tests understanding of a Windows tool that blends route tracing with ongoing per-hop measurements to diagnose where along the path packets are delayed or dropped. Pathping does this: it first discovers the path to the destination in a traceroute-like fashion, then for each hop along that path it sends a series of pings and records latency and loss over time. The result is a hop-by-hop report showing, for every router on the path, how much latency is observed and what fraction of packets were lost through that hop. This makes it possible to pinpoint whether problems are near a particular router or link, rather than just knowing the overall end-to-end round-trip time. The other tools perform different tasks: arp maps IP addresses to MAC addresses on the local network; nmap scans networks to identify hosts and services; Light Meter isn’t a standard Windows networking utility for this purpose. So pathping is the one that combines ping-like measurements with trace-like path information over time.