The term routing is used for taking a packet from one device and sending it through the network to another device on a different network. Routers don’t really care about hosts, they only care about networks and the best path to each network. The logical network address of the destination host is used to get packets to a network through a routed network, and then the hardware address of the host is used to deliver the packet from a router to the correct destination host.
If your network has no routers, then it should be apparent that you are not routing. Routers route traffic to all the networks in your internetwork.
To be able to route packets, a router must know, at a minimum, the following:
- Destination address
- Neighbor routers from which it can learn about remote networks
- Possible routes to all remote networks
- The best route to each remote network
- How to maintain and verify routing information