In the previous lesson of Network Fundamentals Course, we have talked about routers and mentioned the routing table. I hope that you are very satisfied that you almost come to an end of your course! Congratulations, we have just two more lessons to complete!
The routing table is very important when talking about computer networking. It is also known under a name RIB, which means routing information base. What is the routing table exactly? It can be best described as a data table which is always stored in the router itself. It can be also stored on a networked computer. Of course, such a networked computer must be able to list all the routes of the particular network’s destinations. Metrics are the ones which are also associated with routing tables.
What routing table contains? It contains all the information needed about the topology of a particular network which is around it.
The routing tables have been constructed with a purpose to help routing protocols. We have talked about static rules a bit in the previous lessons, but we didn’t say a lot about them. They are entries, made with a purpose to create routing table not to be automatic. But, it doesn’t mean that routing tables don’t have anything fixed, it just means that they are not some result of the network topology or even a discovery procedure.
When talking about routing tables and their functions, we can compare them to some map in the package delivery. Let’s say a node needs to send some particular data to another node that already exists on the network. What happens in such process is that the first step must be knowing where to send it. And who knows that better than routing tables? Most of the times it happens that a node itself is not able to connect directly to some destination node. Then, it must be sent through another proper node but also through a route to that destination code. Nodes are created in such a way that they don’t even try to find the proper destination node. Instead of that, they may send an IP package to LAN’s gateway. This is exactly where routing tables take place! They keep the track of every gateway that has to deliver some data packets. You can understand routing table best as a database that has a purpose to keep all the tracks of all the paths like a map does. Also, routing tables are the ones who allow those gateways to provide such information to all those node requests we were talking about.
I would like you to understand the routing table as a data file located in RAM and primarily used for storing and connecting some of the remote networks. It is made of network and next hop accessories. The purpose of those accessories is to tell a router the proper destination and also the final destination nodes need to reach.
I hope that you are well aware that we almost come to an end of our Network Fundamentals Certification Course! There is only one more lesson left to be learned!