14.6 Summary of Session 14

In this session you have looked in detail at routing. A router uses its routing table to determine where to forward IP packets that arrive at its interface. Each entry in the routing table links a network address or a device address to an interface. Incoming IP packets are checked against each line of the table: when an incoming IP address matches an address, the router will forward the packet to the corresponding interface.

Creating the routing table can be done manually by using the ip route command. Static routing like this is only appropriate for small networks that rarely change. Dynamic routing protocols such as RIP allow the router to build the routing table by learning which networks are connected to each interface. Dynamic routing can deal with more complex and dynamic networks.