Routing always require a host or a router to have a routing table. When a host has a packet to send or when a router has received the packet to be forwarded, it looks at this table to find the route to the final destination. However this simple solution is just impossible today in an Internetwork such as the internet because the number of entries in the table makes table looks up inefficient. Next hop counting is the technique to simply reduce the contents of a routing table.
In this technique, the routing table holds only information that leads to the next hop instead of holding information about the complete route. The entries of the routing table must be consistent with each other. Whilst the network specific routing is used to reduce the routing table and simplify the searching process. In this technique instead of having an entry for each and every host connected to the same physical network, we always have only one entry to define the address of the network itself. In simple words, we treat all hosts connected to same network as one single entity. For example, if there are 1000 hosts attached to the same network, only one entry exists in the routing table instead of 1000 entries.
In this technique, the routing table holds only information that leads to the next hop instead of holding information about the complete route. The entries of the routing table must be consistent with each other. Whilst the network specific routing is used to reduce the routing table and simplify the searching process. In this technique instead of having an entry for each and every host connected to the same physical network, we always have only one entry to define the address of the network itself. In simple words, we treat all hosts connected to same network as one single entity. For example, if there are 1000 hosts attached to the same network, only one entry exists in the routing table instead of 1000 entries.
