Routing Errors - as messages transverse the network they travel a particular path for instance A --> B ---> C the response needs to travel this same path back. C --> B --> A. A routing error occurs when one of the machines that was available during the original transmission of the message has left the network.

Which brings us to the issue of Dropped message.


Dropped Message - Are messages that are NOT forwarded by your machine either because of routing errors or expired TTL values. (Time-To-Live) How long a message stays alive on the network.

For example:

I send a message to 6 other machines attached to me, each machine sends it to 5 other machines attached to it,- each of those 5 machines sends the message to 4 other machine, those 4 send it to 3, those three send it to 2, and those 2 to 1 and that machine drops the message.

Sometimes your machine is the end point for messages. Sometimes messages are dropped because there isn't enough bandwidth the forward the message on to the next host.

Hope this helps.

__________________
Lee Evans, President
LeeWare Development
http://www.leeware.com