How do routers function at the network layer of the OSI model?
Routers learn, record, and maintain awareness of different networks. They decide the best path to these networks and maintain this information in a routing table. The routing table includes the following: • Network addresses, which are protocol-specific. If you are running more than one protocol, you have a network address for each protocol. • The interface the router uses to route a packet to a different network. • A metric, which is the distance to a remote network or the weight of the bandwidth, load, delay, and reliability of the path to the remote network. Routers create broadcast domains. One interface on a router creates a single broadcast domain and collision domain. However, an interface on a switch creates only a single collision domain. In addition to learning the remote network and providing a path to the network, what other functions do routers carry out? Routers perform these tasks: • Routers, by default, do not forward broadcasts or multicasts. • Routers can perform brid
