10.3. Understanding Routing

As data moves between networks, you need to tell it where to go. Moving data through networks is called routing. In the following sections, we'll show how to route data packets and how to secure the routing techniques used to move that data along. First, we will explain a packet, and then we will move on to explain the various types of devices that packets will encounter as they traverse the Internet. This includes gateways, routers, and firewalls.

10.3.1. Packets

To understand how routing data works, we first need to explore what a packet is. A packet is a general term for a bundle of data, organized in a predetermined way for transmission over computer networks. IP packets consist of two parts, the header and the ...

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