Realization of correlation between Round Trip Time (RTT) and hop counts in packet switched networks

QoS in communication networks can be best predicted by RTT and hop counts. Usually, RTT is directly proportional to the incremental count of hops in communication networks. There persists a correlation between these two metrics but how robust this correlation is an open question. Several studies reported different opinions about the correlation between RTT and hop counts. Some authors reported no correlation, some predicted weak correlation and few others evidenced strong correlation between RTT and hop counts. What is the actuality behind these ambiguities related to RTT and hop count's relationship? In this paper we made an effort to realize the correlations between RTT and hop counts by considering two cases: (1) - Correlation between RTT and hop counts in an end to end path lies between client and server of any individual communication network. (2) - The mutual correlation between RTT and hop counts among the different set of end to end paths exist among different remote servers behind different networks with varying conditions of distances. We applied mathematics to measure the correlation by acquiring the experimental readings of both variables (RTT and hop counts) under active probing mechanism of networks testing. The correlation between RTT and hop count can be more effective to predict various network conditions like high load or congestion.