Sams Teach Yourself TCP/IP in 24 Hours, Third Edition

Routing on Complex Networks

So far this hour has focused on a single router or single group of routers. In fact, some large networks might contain hundreds of routers. The Internet contains thousands of routers. On very large networks such as the Internet, it is not feasible for all routers to share all the information necessary to support the routing methods described in previous sections. If every router had to compile and process routing information for every other router on the Internet, the volume of router protocol traffic and the size of the routing tables would soon overwhelm the infrastructure. But it isn't really necessary for every router on the Internet to know about every other router. A router in a dentist's office in Istanbul could ...