How to Add a Statement to the Routing Table

Routing tables hold destination paths for communication.

A routing table is a list of IP addresses and network paths used to deliver communication packets on a network. You can add an statement to the routing table, which adds a routing destination path to the computer. This speeds up communication, because the routing table is cached. The computer looks up the entry in the routing table and immediately knows where to send the communication. Adding statements to the routing table is accomplished using the Windows command prompt.

Instructions

1. Click the Windows "Start" button and select "Run." In the text box displayed, enter "cmd" to start the Windows command prompt.

2. Enter "route print" to view the current routing table. View the table to ensure that the routing statement you want to add is not already programmed into the table.

3. Enter "route ADD destination_network MASK subnet_mask gateway" into the command line. Replace "destination_network" with the other segment of your network. "Subnet_mask" is the subnet mask on your current network and "gateway" is the IP address of your router. For instance, if you have an external network with the IP address of 10.10.10.0, your subnet mask is 255.255.255.0 and your gateway router is 192.168.1.1, the following is the statement added to your routing table:
   route add 10.10.10.0 mask 255.255.255.0 192.168.1.1

4. Type "route print" again to view the routing table. Notice the new statement is added to the table.

References

• How to Geek: Adding a TCP/IP Route to the Windows Routing Table