What is the importance of the TTL value when you ping a URL and what does it mean?

The Time to Live (TTL) value in a ping command indicates the maximum number of hops (or routers) a packet can traverse before being discarded. It prevents packets from circulating indefinitely in the network. Each time the packet passes through a router, the TTL is decremented by one; when it reaches zero, the packet is dropped. Monitoring TTL can help diagnose network issues and determine the distance to the target server.