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Concept
Routing table
Summary
In computer networking, a routing table, or routing information base (RIB), is a data table stored in a router or a network host that lists the routes to particular network destinations, and in some cases, metrics (distances) associated with those routes. The routing table contains information about the topology of the network immediately around it.
The construction of routing tables is the primary goal of routing protocols. Static routes are entries that are fixed, rather than resulting from routing protocols and network topology discovery procedures.
A routing table is analogous to a distribution map in package delivery. Whenever a node needs to send data to another node on a network, it must first know where to send it. If the node cannot directly connect to the destination node, it has to send it via other nodes along a route to the destination node. Each node needs to keep track of which way to deliver various packages of data, and for this it uses a routing table. A routing table is a database that keeps track of paths, like a map, and uses these to determine which way to forward traffic. A routing table is a data file in RAM that is used to store route information about directly connected and remote networks. Nodes can also share the contents of their routing table with other nodes.
The primary function of a router is to forward a packet toward its destination network, which is the destination IP address of the packet. To do this, a router needs to search the routing information stored in its routing table. The routing table contains network/next hop associations. These associations tell a router that a particular destination can be optimally reached by sending the packet to a specific router that represents the next hop on the way to the final destination. The next hop association can also be the outgoing or exit interface to the final destination.
With hop-by-hop routing, each routing table lists, for all reachable destinations, the address of the next device along the path to that destination: the next hop.
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