In EBGP, when two directly connected devices use Loopback ports to establish a connection, the hop-count must be greater than 112. This is because the default Time-to-Live (TTL) value for EBGP connections is 1, which means that EBGP connections are typically expected to be between directly connected peers12. If the peers are not directly connected (as in the case when Loopback interfaces are used), the TTL must be increased to allow the EBGP connection to be established12. Therefore, the hop-count (which essentially represents the TTL value) must be greater than 1