XK0-006 Troubleshooting Practice Question
A technician is troubleshooting a network connectivity issue. They need to trace the path packets take to a remote server and see the round-trip time for each hop. Which command should they use?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
traceroute
traceroute (or tracepath) shows the path and RTT per hop.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
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ping
Why it's wrong here
ping only measures round-trip time to the single destination, using ICMP echo requests; it cannot reveal intermediate hops or per-hop latency. It is tempting because it does report round-trip time, but that is end-to-end only, with no path discovery.
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nslookup
Why it's wrong here
nslookup queries DNS records, resolving names to addresses; it sends no packets toward the remote server and reports no per-hop round-trip times. It is tempting when connectivity failures stem from name resolution, but the stem requires path tracing, which traceroute provides.
- ✓
traceroute
Why this is correct
traceroute sends packets with incrementally increasing TTL values, causing each router along the path to return an ICMP Time Exceeded message. This reveals every hop to the remote server plus the round-trip time per hop, exactly matching the diagnostic requirement.
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nmap
Why it's wrong here
nmap performs port and service scanning, not per-hop path discovery, so it cannot report round-trip times for intermediate routers. traceroute sends packets with incrementing TTL values to elicit ICMP replies from each hop. nmap would be the choice for enumerating open ports on the remote server.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This XK0-006 practice question is part of Courseiva's free CompTIA certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the XK0-006 exam.