Routing table

In computer networking a routing table, or routing information base (RIB), is a data table stored in a router or a networked
computer 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 made in a routing table by non-automatic means and which are fixed
rather than being the result of somenetwork topology "discovery" procedure.

Contents
Overview
Difficulties
Contents
Forwarding table
See also
References
External links

Overview
A routing table uses the same idea that one does when using a 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 proper route to the destination node. Most nodes do not try to figure out which route(s) might work;
instead, a node will send an IP packet to a gateway in the LAN, which then decides how to route the "package" of data to the correct
destination. Each gateway will need 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 which keeps track of paths, like a map, and uses these to determine which way to forward traffic.
Gateways can also share the contents of their routing table with other nodes requesting that information.

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. Assuming that the routing tables are consistent, the simple algorithm of relaying packets to their
destination's next hop thus suffices to deliver data anywhere in a network. Hop-by-hop is the fundamental characteristic of the IP
Internetwork Layer[1] and the OSI Network Layer.

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.

A routing table is a data file in RAM that is used to store route information about directly connected and remote networks. 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.

The network/exit-interface association can also represent the destination IP address of the IP packet. This association occurs on the
router's directly connected networks.

A directly connected network is a network that is directly attached to one of the router interfaces. When a router interface is
configured with an IP address and subnet mask, the interface becomes a host on that attached network. The network address and
subnet mask of the interface, along with the interface type and number, are entered into the routing table as a directly connected
network. When a router forwards a packet to a host, such as a web server, that host is on the same network as a router's directly
connected network.

A remote network is a network that is not directly connected to the router. In other words, a remote network is a network that can
only be reached by sending the packet to another router. Remote networks are added to the routing table using either a dynamic
routing protocol or by configuring static routes. Dynamic routes are routes to remote networks that were learned automatically by the
router, using a dynamic routing protocol. Static routes are routes to networks that a network admin
istrator manually configured.

Difficulties
The need to record routes to large numbers of devices using limited storage space represents a major challenge in routing table
construction. In the Internet, the currently dominant address aggregation technology is a bitwise prefix matching scheme called
Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR).

Contents
The routing table consists of at least three information fields:

1. network ID: The destination subnet

2. metric: The routing metric of the path through which the packet is to be sent. The route will go in the direction of the
gateway with the lowest metric.
3. next hop: The next hop, or gateway, is the address of the next station to which the packet is to be sent on the way to
its final destination
Depending on the application and implementation, it can also contain additional values that refine path selection:

1. quality of service associated with the route. For example, the U flag indicates that an IP route is up.
2. links to filtering criteria/access lists associated with the route
3. interface: such as eth0 for the first Ethernet card, eth1 for the second Ethernet card, etc.
Routing tables are also a key aspect of certain security operations, such as unicast reverse path forwarding (uRPF).[2] In this
technique, which has several variants, the router also looks up, in the routing table, the source address of the packet. If there exists no
route back to the source address, the packet is assumed to be malformed or involved in a network attack, and is dropped.

Network ID Cost Next hop

........ ........ ........
........ ........ ........

Shown below is an example of what the table above could look like on an average computer connected to the internet via a home
router:

Network Destination Netmask Gateway Interface Metric

0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 192.168.0.1 192.168.0.100 10
127.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 1
192.168.0.0 255.255.255.0 192.168.0.100 192.168.0.100 10
192.168.0.100 255.255.255.255 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 10
192.168.0.1 255.255.255.255 192.168.0.100 192.168.0.100 10

The column Network Destination and Netmask together describe the Network ID as mentioned earlier. For
example, destination 192.168.0.0 and netmask 255.255.255.0 can be written as network ID192.168.0.0/24.
The Gateway column contains the same information as theNext hop, i.e. it points to the gateway through which the
network can be reached.
The Interface indicates what locally available interface is responsible for reaching the gateway
. In this example,
gateway 192.168.0.1 (the internet router) can be reached through the local network card with address
 192.168.0.100.
Finally, the Metric indicates the associated cost of using the indicated route. This is useful for determining the
efficiency of a certain route from two points ina network. In this example, it is more efficient to communicate with the
computer itself through the use of address127.0.0.1 (called “localhost”) than it would be through192.168.0.100 (the
IP address of the local network card).

Forwarding table
Routing tables are generally not used directly for packet forwarding in modern router architectures; instead, they are used to generate
the information for a smallerforwarding table. A forwarding table contains only the routes which are chosen by the routing algorithm
as preferred routes for packet forwarding. It is often in a compressed or pre-compiled format that is optimized for hardware storage
and lookup.

This router architecture separates the Control Plane function of the routing table from the Forwarding Plane function of the
forwarding table.[3] This separation of control and forwarding provides uninterruptedperformance.

See also
Forwarding information base
Luleå algorithm
Packet forwarding
Supernetwork

References
1. Requirements for IPv4 Routers(http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1812.txt), F. Baker, RFC 1812 (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1
812), June 1995
2. Ingress Filtering for Multihomed Networks(ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc3704.txt),RFC 3704 (https://tools.ietf.org/
html/rfc3704), F. Baker & P. Savola,March 2004
3. Forwarding and Control Element Separation (ForCES) Framework(http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3746.txt), L. Yang et al.,
RFC3746,April 2004.

External links
IP Routing

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