A user cannot reach the internet from a workstation. A systems administrator performs diagnostics with the following results: Which of the following is the cause for lack of internet connectivity?

If the workstation is not using a DNS server, it might fail to resolve hostnames to IP addresses, but it could still access internet resources directly by IP address if basic network connectivity is otherwise functional.

If the network gateway is not reachable, internet access will fail, but an incorrect network mask is a common configuration error that can *cause* the gateway to be unreachable from the workstation.

An incorrect network mask (subnet mask) causes the workstation to incorrectly determine which IP addresses are on its local subnet. This miscalculation can prevent it from sending traffic directly to the default gateway, which is essential for routing traffic to the internet.

A company firewall blocking connections would prevent internet access but is an external issue, whereas an incorrect network mask is a fundamental misconfiguration on the workstation itself affecting basic network layer communication.