Routers

A brief introduction

Pallavi Sengupta
Aug 25, 2017 · 2 min read
  • A Host or a Router has a routing table, with an entry for each destination or a combination of destinations, to route IP packets.
  • A Routing Table can be static / dynamic.
  • Routing refers to the way routing tables are created to help in forwarding(i.e. the way a packet is delivered to the next station.
  • The main goal of a router is to get traffic from one network to another that are attached to a LAN or across a WAN.
  • A router uses two different planes of operation —
  1. The Control Plane which deals with the traffic which the router has to think about i.e. look up the routing table for routing.
  2. The Forwarding (Data) Plane which deals with switching data in or out of a router for traffic that doesn’t require any actual routing look-ups.

Example — In a network of A,B and C, say data has to be transmitted from A to C via B. In this case, the routing look-up has to be done at the beginning to check the route from A to C. Hence, the Control Plane handles sending the data from A to B. For transmission from B to C, the Forwarding Plane handles the same.

Routers R1,R2,R3,R4

For a more detailed understanding on Routers and Routing Protocols, refer to

http://library.aceondo.net/ebooks/Computer_Science/Data_Communication_and_Networking_by_Behrouz.A.Forouzan_4th.edition.pdf

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