Week 5 - Routing Tables

Most people who know about internet connections, most people know about routers. But do they know of some of their intricacies of them? Well in case you don't know what a router is, it is a networking device that works to send information between devices and a network. The bits of data that are sent are called packets.

Packets are units of data that are grouped together within a sequence and are sent over a computer network. Within these packets are bits and pieces of data that when put together, are able to form a complete message together. When these packets come through the router port, the router reads the address information within the packet to then determine which port is the best port to send the packet out of. 

After the packet arrives at the router, it once again examines the destination of the received IP{ address of the packet then decides to route it to the most optimal location. In order to do this, routing tables come into the mix. 

So after explaining packets, what exactly do routing tables do? Well, routing tables are the rules for determining exactly the data packets are going to be traveling over the network IP. Devices that have IP enabled all use routing tables. 

In the case of routing tables, there are 4 main entries. There are destination LAN IPs, Subnet masks, Gateways, and Interfaces. Routers use a combination of the distance LAN IP and subnet mask to see if the packet matches that route.