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IP Routing

There are two levels of complexity involved in IP routing:
 
Local delivery
when the IP software is presented with a datagram for delivery, it first checks the network part of the destination address to see if matches its own network number. If it does, then the datagram can be delivered locally, and is simply handed to the physical network delivery system (typically an Ethernet device driver) for direct delivery over the local network.
 
Internet delivery
if the network numbers are different, then the datagram must be delivered to a local router (or IP gateway), using direct delivery as above, for "on-delivery" across the Internet.
 

 


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