TTL expired in transit.
Packets ran out of hops before arriving
Seen in Windows ping, Linux ping (Time to live exceeded)
A router dropped the packet because its TTL reached zero, which usually means a routing loop.
Common causes
- Two routers point at each other for that destination, so packets loop until the TTL runs out.
- A misconfigured static route or a route that was withdrawn upstream.
- The TTL set on the ping (`-i` on Windows, `-t` on Linux) is lower than the number of hops.
How to fix it
- Run `tracert` or `traceroute` and look for the same addresses repeating: that is the loop.
- Fix the static or default routes on the routers involved, or report the loop to the provider that owns them.
- If you set a low TTL yourself, raise it.
Got a different message? Paste it into the error explainer.
Related errors
- Broken pipe · Wrote to a connection or pipe that was already closed
- Software caused connection abort · Your own system aborted the connection
- Destination host unreachable. · No path to the host could be found
- PING: transmit failed. General failure. · Windows could not send the ping at all
- Packet needs to be fragmented but DF set. · The packet is bigger than the path MTU
- ECONNREFUSED · Connection refused
- ETIMEDOUT · Connection timed out
- ECONNRESET · Connection reset by peer
- EHOSTUNREACH · No route to host
- getaddrinfo ENOTFOUND · The hostname doesn't exist in DNS
- getaddrinfo EAI_AGAIN · Temporary DNS failure
- ENETUNREACH · Network is unreachable