**9. Criteria for selecting the best traffic route**

Traditionally, there have been three parameters that describe the quality of a connection: bandwidth, delay, and packet loss. A connection with high bandwidth, low delay, and low packet loss is considered to be better than one with low bandwidth, high delay, and high packet loss. The following parameters can be considered when selecting the best traffic route:

**Congestion:** Congestion decreases the available bandwidth and increases delay and packet loss. It is important to avoid routes over congested paths.

**Distance:** Two routes may have different paths. Some networks interconnect only at relatively few locations, so they may have to transport traffic over long distances to get it to its destination. Others have better interconnection, so the traffic does not have to take a detour. There may be reasons not to prefer the more direct route, such as lower bandwidth or congestion, but generally a shorter geographic path is better.

**Hops:** The number of hops (e.g. routers) that shows up on the path to the destination increases the delay. Each hop potentially adds additional delay, because packets have to wait in a queue before they are transmitted, and the extra equipment in a path means that a failure somewhere along the way is more likely. So, paths with fewer hops are better.
