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TTL - Time to Live

TTL may be implemented as a counter or timestamp attached to or embedded in the data. Once the
prescribed event count or timespan has elapsed, data is discarded. In computer networking, TTL prevents a
data packet from circulating indefinitely. In computing applications, TTL is used to improve performance of
caching or to improve privacy.
Under the Internet Protocol, TTL is an 8-bit field. In the IPv4 header, TTL is the 9th octet of 20. In the IPv6
header, it is the 8th octet of 40. The maximum TTL value is 255, the maximum value of a single octet. A
recommended initial value is 64.
The time-to-live value can be thought of as an upper bound on the time that an IP datagram can exist in an
Internet system. The TTL field is set by the sender of the datagram, and reduced by every router on the route
to its destination. If the TTL field reaches zero before the datagram arrives at its destination, then the
datagram is discarded and an ICMP error datagram (11 - Time Exceeded) is sent back to the sender. The
purpose of the TTL field is to avoid a situation in which an undeliverable datagram keeps circulating on an
Internet system, and such a system eventually becoming swamped by such “immortals”.
In theory, under IPv4, time to live is measured in seconds, although every host that passes the datagram must
reduce the TTL by at least one unit. In practice, the TTL field is reduced by one with every hop. To reflect this
practice, the field is renamed hop limit in IPv6.