Route tables simply provide a way of directing network traffic where to go. When a network packet leaves a subnet, it needs to know how to get to its destination, and it uses a route table to find that route.Â
Whenever a new VPC is created, by default, a main route table will also be created and will typically look as shown in the following screenshot if the VPC has been created from scratch rather than from a wizard template:
It is very basic and will contain a single route, and this local route simply allows every subnet created within the VPC to route to each other. This main route table can't be deleted, however, you can modify it and add additional routes as and when you need to.
You aren't just limited to this single route table for your VPC, however; you can create additional route tables and associate different route tables to different subnets. Every route table you create will always have this default "local" route within it though...
