However, the
interesting case is when the destination is not directly reachable. In this case,
the host or gateway attempts to send the datagram to a gateway that is nearer
the destination. The goal of a routing protocol is very simple: It is to supply
the information that is needed to do routing.
-
C. Hedrick; Routing Information Protocol; RFC
1058; June 1988. |
How does Internet routing work? IP
addresses and packet
switching provide
the technical infrastructure which routing protocols use to transmit
packets across the Internet. The Internet
Protocol transfers packets between networks and provides the software
bridge that knits the whole thing together.
Robert Kahn and Vinton
Cerf invented the basic architecture of Internet routing along
with their development of the TCP/IP networking
protocol. Ginny Strasizar at BBN then developed the first Internet router,
on an LSI/11 computer system. RFC
898 provides an interesting description of the status of a wide range
of "gateways: from 1984, including the BBN Butterfly
Gateway which was subsequently deployed across the ARPANET.
The following subsections provide more information.
Other resources. The RADB
List of All Routing Registries
provides a list of the basic routing tables that enables the DNS
to bootstrap itself.