a route to a single host

a special case of a network route, in which all the mask bits are set, and thus no bits are ignored in the comparison

A route to a specific internetwork address (network ID and host ID). Instead of making a routing decision based on just the network ID, the routing decision is based on the combination of network ID and host ID. Host routes allow intelligent routing decisions to be made for each internetwork address. Host routes are typically used to create custom routes to control or optimize specific types of internetwork traffic. For IP routing tables, a host route has a netmask of 255.255.255.255.