Here's my understanding:
ipconfig
lists all NICs my PC has (real or virtual) and withipconfig /all
. I can see all the info for them. Correct?arp -a
prints the arp cache for each active NIC. The arp cache is used by the NIC to determine the MAC address of a device in my LAN if it wants to send an Ip packet to it. Correct?
Now, what exactly does route print
tell me? How my computer should deal with incoming our outgoing IP packets? I always thought it was meant for outgoing packets, but then I saw video where someone said "on-link" tells my computer to listen for packets that it receives if they have a certain IP address.
If it is for incoming packets, how does my computer know where to send outgoing packets?
And why then would the route print need to contain the default gateway?
EDIT
255.255.255.255 255.255.255.255 On-link 127.0.0.1 331
255.255.255.255 255.255.255.255 On-link 172.29.138.145 5256
255.255.255.255 255.255.255.255 On-link 10.0.75.1 271
255.255.255.255 255.255.255.255 On-link 192.168.2.191 311