encoded in a device's address to infer its location on the network, or bridging, which makes no assumptions about where addresses are located and depends heavily on broadcasting to locate unknown addresses. The heavy overhead of broadcasting has led to the dominance of routing in large networks, particularly the Internet; bridging is largely relegated to small networks where the overhead of broadcasting is tolerable. However, since large networks are usually composed of many smaller networks linked together, it would be inaccurate to state that bridging has no use on the Internet; rather, its use is localized. Methods A node can use one of two different methods to forward packets: store-and-forward or cut-through switching. See also Equal-cost multi-path routing Forwarding information base Node-to-node data transfer Per-hop behaviour Port forwarding References Routing