Concept of Routing Table for Beginners

        Routers maintain routing tables that provide information about the path from router to the destination.In Windows Operating system, there are two commands available that allow you to view the routing table.

               - NETSTAT -  Allows the users to check the network configuration. It is to display protocol statistics and current TCP/IP network connections.There are several switches associated with this command.

                 * Netstat - n   - Used to display all the addresses and port numbers in the form of numbers.
                 * Netstat - r    -  Used to display the routing table.

              - ROUTE PRINT - Allows the user to view the current routing table. This command is similar to Nestat -t

     The routing table generally consist of a number of routes. Each route has information, which determines where the packed will be sent.

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• Network Destination - Indicates the IP address of the outgoing packet and refers to either to a single address or a network ID
• Netmask - Similar to the subnet mask and is checked with the network destination to decide where the packet should be sent. A default netmask generally uses the class-full 0 and 255 values but they may also classless values.
• Gateway - Indicates the gateway for the packet. for an IP client , this number is either the true default gateway for the network , the loopback, or the IP address of the client's Network Interface Card (NIC)
• Interface - Indicates the NIC through which the packet should be sent out. for an IP client, It is either the loopback or the NIC's IP address.
• Metric - Indicates the umber of hops to the destination. A single hop refers to the number of local networks the packet must move through.