A router routes and forwards IP packets based on the destination IP address of the received packets. The only exception to this is policy-based routing, where specific policies are built on the ingress interfaces of the router to route packets based on the source IP addresses. The router looks at the destination IP addresses and finds the best route for the destination in the routing table. The routing table is built using manually defined routes, or dynamically using specific routing protocols, that exchange information between the routers.
Each routing entry in the route table at a bare minimum has the following components:
- A prefix that is being routed, including the network mask
- The next hop or the egress interface for ...
