Each IP packet contains information about its origin and destination.

A routing table contains the information necessary to forward an IP packet along the best path toward its destination.

In this note i will show how to display the routing table in Windows using the route print
command.

To display the routing table in Windows, use the route
command with the print
option.

Display all routing tables:

 C:\> route print

Print IPv4 routing table:

 C:\> route print -4

Print IPv6 routing table:

 C:\> route print -6

Show only the network destinations that match 192*
:

 C:\> route print  198*

Example of the routing table in Windows:

 IPv4 Route Table
==================================================================================
Active Routes:
Network Destination Netmask Gateway Interface Metric 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 192.168.1.1 192.168.1.31 50 127.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 On-link 127.0.0.1 331 127.0.0.1 255.255.255.255 On-link 127.0.0.1 331 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0 On-link 192.168.1.31 306 192.168.1.31 255.255.255.255 On-link 192.168.1.31 306

On-link
in the “Gateway” column means that the destination network is directly attached to the interface i.e. the NIC is in direct contact with the destination

network – on the same subnet.

The traffic that matches such route entry will trigger an ARP request on the interface to resolve the destination IP address directly i.e. find out a MAC-address of the target device (without contacting the gateway).