Intro to Internet Routing 🌐

For billions of computers to be able to communicate with each other, the internet has to be able to route packets between them. Routing is a core internet function and the only thing that makes long-distance computer-to-computer communication possible. Routing also presents an interesting set of challeges. Routing decisions have be made extremely quickly, which places constraints on the structure of the IP addresses used during the routing process. Routers have be able to determine how to route packets appropriately, which requires separate protocols. Ideally routes are stable (don’t change over time) but also robust (change if existing paths become overloaded or unusable). So there’s a lot of interesting stuff to discuss here.

Credits: Talking: Geoffrey Challen (Assistant Professor, Computer Science and Engineering, University at Buffalo). Producing: Greg Bunyea (Undergraduate, Computer Science and Engineering, University at Buffalo).

Part of the https://www.internet-class.org online internet course. A blue Systems Research Group (https://blue.cse.buffalo.edu) production.