Computer Network

Introduction

The network allows computers to communicate with each other and share resources and information. The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) designed “Advanced Research Projects Agency Network” (ARPANET) for the United States Department of Defense. It was the first computer network in the world in late 1960s and early 1970s.^[1]

Network classification

The following list presents categories used for classifying networks.

Connection method

Computer networks can also be classified according to the hardware and software technology that is used to interconnect the individual devices in the network, such as Optical fiber, Ethernet, Wireless LAN, HomePNA, Power line communication or G.hn. Ethernet uses physical wiring to connect devices. Frequently deployed devices include hubs, switches, bridges and/or routers.

Routing Table

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In computer networking a routing table, or Routing Information Base (RIB), is an electronic table (file) or database type object that is stored in a router or a networked computer. The routing table stores the routes (and in some cases, metrics associated with those routes) to particular network destinations. This information contains the topology of the network immediately around it. The construction of routing tables is the primary goal of routing protocols and static routes.

Routing tables are generally not used directly for packet forwarding in modern router architectures; instead, they are used to generate the information for a smaller forwarding table which contains only the routes which are chosen by the routing algorithm as preferred routes for packet forwarding, often in a compressed or pre-compiled format that is optimized for hardware storage and lookup. The remainder of this article will ignore this implementation detail, and refer to the entire routing/forwarding information subsystem as the “routing table”.