What Is Routing?

Date First Published: 21st April 2022

Topic: Computer Networking

Subtopic: Data Transmission Technologies

Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty: Medium

Difficulty Level: 5/10

CONTENTS

Types Of Routing

Learn more about what routing is in this article.

Routing is the process of selecting a path for a data packet to be transported from source to destination. Routers are responsible for making these decisions. They make these decisions based on the length of the path and the speed of forwarding packets. They also rely on routing tables to make a decision about how data packets should be routed across network paths.

Note:

A routing table can be thought of as a train table where train passengers take a look at the timetable to decide which train to catch. This is because routers refer to routing tables, which contain a list of routers with their IP addresses to decide how data packets should be routed across data paths and to select the best path for the data packet to be transported from source to destination.

Routing works by the router reading the headers of the data packet in order to see its destination and then it determines where the packet should be routed based on data in the routing tables. These steps are carried out all the time with millions of packets being sent. It is possible that data packets may be routed several times with different routers.

Types Of Routing

Static routing - A network administrator manually adds routers to the routing table. Static routing tables do not change. The routes that data packets take across a network are fixed. They only change when the network administrator manually updates the routing tables.
Dynamic routing - The routing tables update automatically in accordance with the current state of the route in the routing table. Protocols are used in dynamic routing for the purpose of identifying network destinations and the routes to reach them. Several different routing protocols are used to determine the shortest and fastest paths. Dynamic routers determine this based on the period of time that it takes for data packets to reach their final destination. Dynamic routing is easy to configure and much more effective at determining the ideal route to the final destination.
Default routing - Often used with a stub router, which is a router that is connected to only one other router, this type of routing is designed to send all data packets to a single router.