routing interface

What is Routing Interface (in computer networking)?

In general, the port at which a router connects to a given network. For a given network, the port on the router that is directly connected to the network is called a local router interface, while any port on the router that is connected to a different network is called a remote router interface. Each interface of a router has a unique MAC address, just like a network interface card (NIC) in a computer.

In the Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) of Microsoft Windows 2000, a router interface is a physical or logical interface over which packets are forwarded. These packets can be unicast packets of Internet Protocol (IP), Internetwork Packet Exchange (IPX), or AppleTalk, or multicast packets of IP. Routing interfaces in Windows 2000 RRAS can be

• Physical local area network (LAN) interfaces such as Ethernet or Token Ring connections. Some wide area network (WAN) interfaces such as frame relay adapters are logically represented by RRAS as LAN interfaces.
• Demand-dial interfaces that represent logical connections such as dial-up modem or dedicated virtual private network (VPN) point-to-point connections. These can be either on-demand or persistent connections.
• IP-in-IP tunnel interfaces, which represent a tunneled point-to-point connection.