Routing And Switching Questions Medium
The purpose of a routing metric is to determine the best path or route for data packets to travel from the source to the destination in a network. It is used in routing decisions to evaluate and compare different routes and select the most optimal one based on certain criteria.
Routing metrics are numerical values assigned to each route, indicating the quality or cost of that route. The lower the metric value, the better the route is considered. These metrics can be based on various factors such as bandwidth, delay, reliability, load, or hop count.
When a router receives multiple routes to the same destination, it uses the routing metric to calculate the cost of each route. The router then selects the route with the lowest metric value as the best path to forward the data packets. This ensures efficient and reliable data transmission by choosing the route that meets specific requirements or priorities set by the network administrator.
Different routing protocols use different metrics to make routing decisions. For example, the Routing Information Protocol (RIP) uses hop count as its metric, while the Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) protocol uses cost based on bandwidth as its metric. The choice of metric depends on the network's requirements and the protocol being used.
Overall, routing metrics play a crucial role in determining the best path for data packets in a network, enabling efficient and effective routing decisions.