Static or Dynamic Checkpoint

* As a network administrator for a company, you want to configure an IP route between two routers. Of static and dynamic routing, which is more appropriate? A router is a device that connects two LANs or WANs together. It has the ability to determine the best known route to send packets to a destination. The factors used to determine the best known route include not only the fastest route, but the most efficient.

By using routing tables the router can determine the route with the least amount of congestion or traffic, as well as the safest route for the packets to travel. It doesn’t always mean it’s the fastest route to the destination, but it is the most efficient. A router can be manually programmed by the network administrator to provide the most efficient route. This is called static routing. In this type of routing, the network administrator manually determines the best mappings to each destination before the routing begins.

This is a finite form of routing. Once the network administrator programs the routers, there is no change in the routing pattern unless it is reprogrammed to a new route. If the pattern runs through a congested network area, a router in the pattern is not functioning properly, or part of the network is down, the router continues to try the same pattern because that is all it is programmed to remember. For today’s larger networks, an unforgiving router mapping is not necessarily the most efficient way of passing information within the network.

When routing dynamically, software is used to program a router to be forgiving. This means that the router remembers the best or most efficient path, but if that path is not working, it will try the next most efficient route. The router is able to do this by remembering the routing tables most often used in the network. A dynamic router needs very little maintenance because it automatically remembers the network routing protocols as they are used. If a path is congested or a outer is down, it uses the remembered routing tables to find the next best route without any manual programming. This type of dynamic routing is fault tolerant. It not only senses the usual route is not efficient, but it shares the information among routers on the internetwork so that all routers are aware of the new route. In the above scenario, as a network administrator in the present time, I would choose to configure an IP route between two routers dynamically.

I believe it is more appropriate to route packets in the most efficient manner, and by routing dynamically this will happen automatically, and without any knowledge by the end user. The network administrator will only have to do the initial programming of the router, and the rest is done by the router itself. As a network administrator, not having to program each path a router will take, will free up time for other projects. In the given scenario, routing the network dynamically is the most appropriate choice.