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34 .\" @(#)routed.8 8.2 (Berkeley) 12/11/93
41 .Nd network RIP and router discovery routing daemon
48 .Ar net Ns Op /mask Ns Op ,metric
53 is a daemon invoked at boot time to manage the network
55 It uses Routing Information Protocol, RIPv1 (RFC\ 1058),
57 and Internet Router Discovery Protocol (RFC 1256)
58 to maintain the kernel routing table.
59 The RIPv1 protocol is based on the reference 4.3BSD daemon.
67 for Routing Information Protocol packets.
68 It also sends and receives multicast Router Discovery ICMP messages.
69 If the host is a router,
71 periodically supplies copies
72 of its routing tables to any directly connected hosts and networks.
73 It also advertise or solicits default routes using Router Discovery
76 When started (or when a network interface is later turned on),
78 uses an AF_ROUTE address family facility to find those
79 directly connected interfaces configured into the
80 system and marked "up".
81 It adds necessary routes for the interfaces
82 to the kernel routing table.
83 Soon after being first started, and provided there is at least one
84 interface on which RIP has not been disabled,
86 deletes all pre-existing
87 non-static routes in kernel table.
88 Static routes in the kernel table are preserved and
89 included in RIP responses if they have a valid RIP metric
93 If more than one interface is present (not counting the loopback interface),
94 it is assumed that the host should forward packets among the
96 After transmitting a RIP
99 Router Discovery Advertisements or Solicitations on a new interface,
100 the daemon enters a loop, listening for
101 RIP request and response and Router Discover packets from other hosts.
107 formulates a reply based on the information maintained in its
111 packet generated contains a list of known routes, each marked
112 with a "hop count" metric (a count of 16 or greater is
113 considered "infinite").
114 Advertised metrics reflect the metric associated with interface
117 so setting the metric on an interface
118 is an effective way to steer traffic.
120 Responses do not contain routes with a first hop on the requesting
121 network to implement in part
124 The routing table maintained by the daemon
125 includes space for several gateways for each destination
126 to speed recovery from a failing router.
129 packets received are used to update the routing tables provided they are
130 from one of the several currently recognized gateways or
131 advertise a better metric than at least one of the existing
134 When an update is applied,
136 records the change in its own tables and updates the kernel routing table
137 if the best route to the destination changes.
138 The change in the kernel routing table is reflected in the next batch of
141 If the next response is not scheduled for a while, a
143 response containing only recently changed routes is sent.
145 In addition to processing incoming packets,
147 also periodically checks the routing table entries.
148 If an entry has not been updated for 3 minutes, the entry's metric
149 is set to infinity and marked for deletion.
150 Deletions are delayed until the route has been advertised with
151 an infinite metric to insure the invalidation
152 is propagated throughout the local internet.
156 Routes in the kernel table that are added or changed as a result
157 of ICMP Redirect messages are deleted after a while to minimize
159 When a TCP connection suffers a timeout,
162 which deletes all redirected routes
163 through the gateway involved, advances the age of all RIP routes through
164 the gateway to allow an alternate to be chosen, and advances of the
165 age of any relevant Router Discovery Protocol default routes.
167 Hosts acting as internetwork routers gratuitously supply their
168 routing tables every 30 seconds to all directly connected hosts
170 These RIP responses are sent to the broadcast address on nets that support
172 to the destination address on point-to-point links, and to the router's
173 own address on other networks.
174 If RIPv2 is enabled, multicast packets are sent on interfaces that
175 support multicasting.
177 If no response is received on a remote interface, if there are errors
178 while sending responses,
179 or if there are more errors than input or output (see
181 then the cable or some other part of the interface is assumed to be
182 disconnected or broken, and routes are adjusted appropriately.
185 .Em Internet Router Discovery Protocol
186 is handled similarly.
187 When the daemon is supplying RIP routes, it also listens for
188 Router Discovery Solicitations and sends Advertisements.
189 When it is quiet and only listening to other RIP routers, it
190 sends Solicitations and listens for Advertisements.
192 a good Advertisement, it stops listening for broadcast or multicast
194 It tracks several advertising routers to speed recovery when the
195 currently chosen router dies.
196 If all discovered routers disappear,
197 the daemon resumes listening to RIP responses.
199 While using Router Discovery (which happens by default when
200 the system has a single network interface and a Router Discover Advertisement
201 is received), there is a single default route and a variable number of
202 redirected host routes in the kernel table.
204 The Router Discover standard requires that advertisements
205 have a default "lifetime" of 30 minutes. That means should
206 something happen, a client can be without a good route for
207 30 minutes. It is a good idea to reduce the default to 45
209 .Fl P Cm rdisc_interval=45
210 on the command line or
211 .Cm rdisc_interval=45
218 facility described below to support "legacy" systems
219 that can handle neither RIPv2 nor Router Discovery.
221 By default, neither Router Discovery advertisements nor solicitations
222 are sent over point to point links (e.g. PPP).
231 to supply routing information.
232 This is the default if multiple network interfaces are present on which
233 RIP or Router Discovery have not been disabled, and if the kernel switch
236 is the opposite of the
240 Do not run in the background.
241 This option is meant for interactive use.
243 This flag is used on internetwork routers to offer a route
244 to the "default" destination.
248 and is present mostly for historical reasons.
251 on the command line or
255 since a larger metric
256 will be used, reducing the spread of the potentially dangerous
258 This is typically used on a gateway to the Internet,
259 or on a gateway that uses another routing protocol whose routes
260 are not reported to other local routers.
261 Notice that because a metric of 1 is used, this feature is
262 dangerous. It is more commonly accidently used to create chaos with routing
263 loop than to solve problems.
265 This causes host or point-to-point routes to not be advertised,
266 provided there is a network route going the same direction.
267 That is a limited kind of aggregation.
268 This option is useful on gateways to ethernets that have other gateway
269 machines connected with point-to-point links such as SLIP.
271 This causes the machine to advertise a host or point-to-point route to
272 its primary interface.
273 It is useful on multi-homed machines such as NFS servers.
274 This option should not be used except when the cost of
275 the host routes it generates is justified by the popularity of
277 It is effective only when the machine is supplying
278 routing information, because there is more than one interface.
283 option to the limited extent of advertising the host route.
285 do not ignore RIPv2 authentication if we do not care about RIPv2
287 This option is required for conformance with RFC 1723.
288 However, it makes no sense and breaks using RIP as a discovery protocol
289 to ignore all RIPv2 packets that carry authentication when this machine
290 does not care about authentication.
291 .It Fl T Ar tracefile
292 increases the debugging level to at least 1 and
293 causes debugging information to be appended to the trace file.
294 Note that because of security concerns, it is wisest to not run
296 routinely with tracing directed to a file.
298 increases the debugging level, which causes more information to be logged
299 on the tracefile specified with
302 The debugging level can be increased or decreased
308 .It Fl F Ar net[/mask][,metric]
309 minimize routes in transmissions via interfaces with addresses that match
311 and synthesizes a default route to this machine with the
313 The intent is to reduce RIP traffic on slow, point-to-point links
314 such as PPP links by replacing many large UDP packets of RIP information
315 with a single, small packet containing a "fake" default route.
318 is absent, a value of 14 is assumed to limit
319 the spread of the "fake" default route.
321 This is a dangerous feature that when used carelessly can cause routing
323 Notice also that more than one interface can match the specified network
328 is equivalent to adding the parameter
336 Any other argument supplied is interpreted as the name
337 of a file in which the actions of
343 appending the name of the trace file to the command.
346 also supports the notion of
354 is started, it reads the file
356 to find such distant gateways which may not be located using
357 only information from a routing socket, to discover if some
358 of the local gateways are
360 and to obtain other parameters.
361 Gateways specified in this manner should be marked passive
362 if they are not expected to exchange routing information,
363 while gateways marked active
364 should be willing to exchange RIP packets.
367 gateways are installed in the
368 kernel's routing tables once upon startup and are not included in
369 transmitted RIP responses.
371 Distant active gateways are treated like network interfaces.
372 RIP responses are sent
376 If no responses are received, the associated route is deleted from
377 the kernel table and RIP responses advertised via other interfaces.
378 If the distant gateway resumes sending RIP responses, the associated
381 Such gateways can be useful on media that do not support broadcasts
382 or multicasts but otherwise act like classic shared media like
383 Ethernets such as some ATM networks.
384 One can list all RIP routers reachable on the ATM network in
391 are also passive, but are not placed in the kernel
392 routing table nor are they included in routing updates.
393 The function of external entries is to indicate
394 that another routing process
395 will install such a route if necessary,
396 and that alternate routes to that destination should not be installed
399 Such entries are only required when both routers may learn of routes
400 to the same destination.
404 file is comprised of a series of lines, each in
405 one of the following formats or consist of parameters described below:
414 .Pf < Cm passive No \&|
425 .Pf < Cm passive No \&|
433 is the name of the destination network or host.
434 It may be a symbolic network name or an Internet address
435 specified in "dot" notation (see
437 (If it is a name, then it must either be defined in
443 must have been started before
447 is an optional number between 1 and 32 indicating the netmask associated
452 is the name or address of the gateway to which RIP responses should
456 is the hop count to the destination host or network.
459 .Ar " net nname/32 ".
466 must be present to indicate whether the gateway should be treated as
470 (as described above),
471 or whether the gateway is
473 to the scope of the RIP protocol.
475 Lines that start with neither "net" nor "host" must consist of one
476 or more of the following parameter settings, separated by commas or
479 .It Cm if Ns \&= Ns Ar ifname
480 indicates that the other parameters on the line apply to the interface
483 .It Cm subnet Ns \&= Ns Ar nname[/mask][,metric]
484 advertises a route to network
488 and the supplied metric (default 1).
489 This is useful for filling "holes" in CIDR allocations.
490 This parameter must appear by itself on a line.
492 Do not use this feature unless necessary. It is dangerous.
493 .It Cm passwd Ns \&= Ns Ar XXX
494 specifies a RIPv2 password that will be included on all RIPv2
495 responses sent and checked on all RIPv2 responses received.
496 The password must not contain any blanks, tab characters, commas
499 turns off aggregation of subnets in RIPv1 and RIPv2 responses.
501 turns off aggregation of networks into supernets in RIPv2 responses.
504 .Cm no_rip Cm no_rdisc .
506 disables all RIP processing on the specified interface.
507 If no interfaces are allowed to process RIP packets,
509 acts purely as a router discovery daemon.
512 .Cm no_ripv1_in no_ripv2_in no_ripv1_out no_ripv2_out .
514 Note that turning off RIP without explicitly turning on router
515 discovery advertisements with
521 to act as a client router discovery daemon, not advertising.
523 causes RIPv1 received responses to be ignored.
525 causes RIPv2 received responses to be ignored.
527 turns off RIPv1 output and causes RIPv2 advertisements to be
528 multicast when possible.
530 disables the Internet Router Discovery Protocol.
532 disables the transmission of Router Discovery Solicitations.
534 specifies that Router Discovery solicitations should be sent,
535 even on point-to-point links,
536 which by default only listen to Router Discovery messages.
538 disables the transmission of Router Discovery Advertisements
540 specifies that Router Discovery advertisements should be sent,
541 even on point-to-point links,
542 which by default only listen to Router Discovery messages
544 specifies that Router Discovery packets should be broadcast instead of
546 .It Cm rdisc_pref Ns \&= Ns Ar N
547 sets the preference in Router Discovery Advertisements to the integer
549 .It Cm rdisc_interval Ns \&= Ns Ar N
550 sets the nominal interval with which Router Discovery Advertisements
551 are transmitted to N seconds and their lifetime to 3*N.
552 .It Cm fake_default Ns \&= Ns Ar metric
553 has an identical effect to
554 .Fl F Ar net[/mask][,metric]
555 with the network and mask coming from the specified interface.
559 When RIPv2 routes are multicast, so that RIPv1 listeners cannot
560 receive them, this feature causes a RIPv1 default route to be
561 broadcast to RIPv1 listeners.
564 the default route is broadcast with a metric of 14.
565 That serves as a "poor man's router discovery" protocol.
568 Note that the netmask associated with point-to-point links (such as SLIP
569 or PPP, with the IFF_POINTOPOINT flag) is used by
571 to infer the netmask used by the remote system when RIPv1 is used.
574 .Bl -tag -width /etc/gateways -compact
582 .%T Internet Transport Protocols
584 .%Q Xerox System Integration Standard
587 It does not always detect unidirectional failures in network interfaces
588 (e.g., when the output side fails).