What is the main purpose of route summarization in networking?

The main purpose of route summarization in networking is to reduce the number of advertised routes. Route summarization allows a router to represent a group of contiguous IP addresses with a single summary address. This significantly decreases the size of the routing table, which can improve the efficiency of routing.

By summarizing routes, routers can minimize the amount of routing information exchanged between different networks. This efficiency not only helps conserve bandwidth but also improves convergence times within routing protocols, as fewer updates are needed. Ultimately, this leads to better performance and scalability within larger networks, where managing numerous individual routes can be cumbersome and less efficient.