3Fundamental Routing Protocols
3.1 Routing Protocols
Routing is the major functionality of layer 3, i.e. the network layer in the OSI model. In the TCP/IP model, routing is performed at the Internet layer of the protocol stack. Routing helps to interconnect small networks so as to form a huge network. The routing protocol controls the flow of data between these smaller networks to avoid traffic congestion in the links. The router acts as the point of data entry and exit from the connected neighboring networks in the smaller networks. The prime functionality of the router is to find the best path between two or more nodes that may belong to different networks connected together. The path can be best in terms of the minimum transit time, least hop counts, least congestion, minimum cost, high reliability, or any other metrics as used in the specific protocol for routing.
The router has a routing table in its memory, and the entries of the routing table and the size of the table depend on the routing ...
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