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A Technical History of the ARPANET -
A Technical Tour

IMP-to-IMP

Addressing

The routing algorithm used by the ARPANET is designed such that each IMP does not have to be aware of the address of its neighbors.  When an update occurs, the routing table is automatically updated to indicate the current topology and status of the network.  Therefore, when an IMP wants to send a packet to the destination IMP, it looks in its routing tables to find the shortest path.  The routing table indicates the address of the next IMP in the path towards the destination IMP.

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