The Control Plane
In this section, the textbook explains how the control plane maintains the routing table. The three techniques to accomplish this are static routing, distance vector routing, and link state routing. As you explore the next three subunits describing each one in detail, note the advantages and disadvantages of each technique. How does each method deal with link and router failures?
5.1.2 The control plane
One of the objectives of the control plane in the network layer is to maintain the routing tables that are used on all routers. As indicated earlier, a routing table is a data structure that contains, for each destination address (or block of addresses) known by the router, the outgoing interface over which the router must forward a packet destined to this address. The routing table may also contain additional information such as the address of the next router on the path towards the destination or an estimation of the cost of this path.
In this section, we discuss the three main techniques that can be used to maintain the routing tables in a network.
Source: Olivier Bonaventure, https://s3.amazonaws.com/saylordotorg-resources/wwwresources/site/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Computer-Networking-Principles-Bonaventure-1-30-31-OTC1.pdf This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.