hello everyone my name is vijay kumar Devireddy and i am glad to have you back on my episode 51 today we are discussing about Routers, now while switches operate at layer two of the OSI model by making their decisions based on MAC addresses,routers operate at layer three, making their decisions based on IP addresses.Routers are used to connect two or more network to form an internetwork. Such as when you connect your small office home office router, your internal network,out to the internet.It connects your office's network out to other office's network over the internet.Now, routers are devices that make routing decisions and they do this by using IP addresses. These layer three IP addresses are used to determine what network a particular host is on and what path the traffic should take to go across the wide area network until it reaches its destination network.Once the traffic reaches the destination network or the final router that's involved, that particular router will conduct ARP broadcast to locate the correct host on its local network and pass the traffic to it using its MAC address at the layer two which is known as that physical address.In addition to this important routing function,routers also provide us with some security functions too, access control lists or ACLs can be configured on the router's interface to control the flow of traffic into or out of a certain part of the network.ACLs are an ordered set of rules that will either permit or deny traffic based upon certain characteristics,like it's source or destination IP address,the source or destination port number associated with it and the application or service being run.Now in an effort to get past these access control lists,attackers will often conduct IP spoofing. If they can spoof the IP, they can trick the access control list to think they're on the approved list and let them in or let them out.Since routers are on the external interface for a network, they're commonly a target for attack as well. And so out of the box, routers tend to be very insecure and you need to configure them properly for security.This includes changing this like your default username and password, changing the default routing tables,and changing those default IP internal addresses.To help protect our routers and our internal networks,we use a lot of other network devices and technologies,such as firewalls, intrusion prevention systems,virtual private network connections, content filters,and access control lists.By layering all these defenses, we create a better defense in depth posture.Now, we're going to cover all of these protective devices and technologies throughout this course but for now, it's sufficient to realize that using these things helps add up our security.And that helps us to secure our routers from various attack methods. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app