What occurs when the number of collisions on a network leads to continuous retransmissions?

In networking, when the number of collisions significantly increases among devices attempting to communicate, it can lead to a phenomenon known as a broadcast storm. A broadcast storm occurs when there are excessive broadcast messages being sent across the network, leading to a situation where these messages collide and cause multiple retransmissions. As the network devices continually try to resend their messages due to collisions, they effectively overwhelm the network bandwidth, which can cascade into a situation where legitimate traffic is impeded.

This scenario is particularly common in networks where multiple devices are trying to transmit data simultaneously on a shared medium. In a broadcast storm, the sheer volume of retransmissions exacerbates the problem, resulting in even more collisions and further exacerbating the saturation of the network.

The other choices describe different issues: network saturation refers more broadly to a situation where the network is unable to handle any new transmissions due to excessive load, traffic congestion involves delays and bottlenecks causing slower data transmission without necessarily being tied to collisions, and packet loss denotes a situation where packets of data fail to reach their destination due to errors, congestion, or collisions but is not specifically the same as the ongoing cycle of retransmissions caused by continuous collisions as seen in a broadcast storm.