A traceroute from a host to a destination shows responses from 5 intermediate routers before the destination replies, meaning the destination is 6 hops away. If the original packet's TTL was set to 64, what TTL value does the destination receive on the packet (assuming a direct path with no other adjustments)?

Each router that forwards the packet decrements the TTL (Time To Live) field by 1. Since the destination is 6 hops away, the packet passes through 6 forwarding devices total (5 intermediate routers, then arrives at the destination as its 6th hop) before reaching it, so the TTL is decremented 6 times: 64 − 6 = 58. This TTL decrement-and-discard mechanism (routers drop packets when TTL reaches 0) is precisely what traceroute exploits, by sending packets with incrementing TTL values starting from 1 to map each hop along the path.