There are many sophisticated algorithms that attempt to find the best, or nearly the best, routes that a packet can go to get from one host to another. It is widely believed that in order to find the very best route, extremely time-consuming algorithms would have to be run, algorithms that are too expensive to use, so more approximate algorithms are used.

We have only touched on the highlights of networking; entire courses are devoted to this topic. There are many open problems still to be solved and many areas that urgently need more work. Growing reliance on worldwide networking makes this a very exciting time to be studying networking.