I forgot to reference this, but here it is. I will be making my own interpretation and writing about the this subject soon. The author’s post was well-written.
https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/thread/14343#72270
The network command tells RIP which networks to participate on. It will check local interfaces for those subnets and begin advertising on those interfaces which match the network statements.
The “ip host” command allows you to create an alias for a given device. So, if you have all of your routers with loopback addresses that should be universally reachable, you can configure all of the devices with host entries so instead of typing in the IP every time you can use the alias name instead. It does not actually change the routing at all.
The “ip route” command allows you to enter static routes – which can be useful in various circumstances. These include places where you only have on exit point, where you want to force traffic across a specific path, or if you want to configure a floating static route to provide a backup path. Floating static routes allow you to set a metric on the route in such a way that if the dynamic or primary path fails and that route is removed, the floating static route will remain and act as a failover path.
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