In some cases, a home network will consists of more than one network (or subnet) due to the existence of another router. Most home routers are configured to act as a simple gateway by default (processing requests to and from the Internet from a single network), but can be configured to act as a true router as well.
On a Linksys router you can use the Dynamic Routing and Static Routing tabs to configure how the router will forward requests to other networks. For example, if you have another router running a routing protocol like RIP, you could configure your Linksys router to use RIP as well and both could then exchange routing table information. Ultimately, this would allow the second (or third, or forth) network to access the Internet through the Linksys router as well. Static routing does the same job, but requires you to specify the IP address of the next router on your internal network.
While this “true routing” functionality is useful to those who truly need it, it is seldom necessary on simpler home networks where using the router as a gateway meets all other needs.
