The Next Hop in a Routing Table

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In a routing table, the next hop refers to the IP address of the next router that a packet must be forwarded to, in order to reach its destination. The next hop is typically the IP address of the next router on the path to the destination network.

To understand the significance of the next hop in a routing table, it's important to understand how routing works. When a packet is sent from one network to another, it is typically forwarded through a series of routers until it reaches its destination network. Each router along the way examines the destination IP address of the packet and consults its routing table to determine where to send the packet next.

The routing table contains information about the available paths to different networks. Each entry in the routing table typically includes the following information:

• Destination network: the IP address or network ID of the destination network.
• Subnet mask: the subnet mask used to determine which bits in the IP address represent the network ID and which bits represent the host ID.
• Next hop: the IP address of the next router that the packet should be forwarded to in order to reach the destination network.
• Metric: a value that represents the cost of using this particular route. The lower the metric, the more preferred the route.
• Interface: the interface through which the packet should be forwarded to reach the next hop.

So, to answer the question, the value indicated by the next hop in a routing table is the IP address of the remote router that the packet should be forwarded to in order to reach the destination network. The next hop is not an indication of the preference of the route source, how the route was learned, or the exit interface IP address for forwarding the packets.