routed(8) BSD System Manager's Manual routed(8)

NAME

 routed -- network RIP and router discovery routing daemon

SYNOPSIS

 routed [-sqdghmpAt] [-T tracefile] [-F net[/mask[,metric]]]

DESCRIPTION

 Routed is a daemon invoked at boot time to manage the network routing
 tables. It uses Routing Information Protocol, RIPv1 (RFC 1058), RIPv2
 (RFC 1723), and Internet Router Discovery Protocol (RFC 1256) to maintain
 the kernel routing table. The RIPv1 protocol is based on the reference
 4.3BSD daemon.
 It listens on the udp(4)  socket for the route(8)  service (see
 services(5) ) for Routing Information Protocol packets. It also sends and
 receives multicast Router Discovery ICMP messages. If the host is a
 router, routed periodically supplies copies of its routing tables to any
 directly connected hosts and networks. It also advertise or solicits
 default routes using Router Discovery ICMP messages.
 When started (or when a network interface is later turned on), routed
 uses an AF_ROUTE address family facility to find those directly connected
 interfaces configured into the system and marked "up". It adds necessary
 routes for the interfaces to the kernel routing table. Soon after being
 first started, and provided there is at least one interface on which RIP
 has not been disabled, routed deletes all pre-existing non-static routes
 in kernel table. Static routes in the kernel table are preserved and
 included in RIP responses if they have a valid RIP metric (see route(8) 
 ).
 If more than one interface is present (not counting the loopback inter-
 face), it is assumed that the host should forward packets among the con-
 nected networks. After transmitting a RIP request and Router Discovery
 Advertisements or Solicitations on a new interface, the daemon enters a
 loop, listening for RIP request and response and Router Discover packets
 from other hosts.
 When a request packet is received, routed formulates a reply based on the
 information maintained in its internal tables. The response packet gen-
 erated contains a list of known routes, each marked with a "hop count"
 metric (a count of 16 or greater is considered "infinite"). Advertised
 metrics reflect the metric associated with interface (see ifconfig(8)  ),
 so setting the metric on an interface is an effective way to steer traf-
 fic.
 Responses do not contain routes with a first hop on the requesting net-
 work to implement in part split-horizon.
 The routing table maintained by the daemon includes space for several
 gateways for each destination to speed recovery from a failing router.
 RIP response packets received are used to update the routing tables pro-
 vided they are from one of the several currently recognized gateways or
 advertise a better metric than at least one of the existing gateways.
 When an update is applied, routed records the change in its own tables
 and updates the kernel routing table if the best route to the destination
 changes. The change in the kernel routing table is reflected in the next
 batch of response packets sent. If the next response is not scheduled
 for a while, a flash update response containing only recently changed
 routes is sent.
 In addition to processing incoming packets, routed also periodically
 checks the routing table entries. If an entry has not been updated for 3
 minutes, the entry's metric is set to infinity and marked for deletion.
 Deletions are delayed until the route has been advertised with an infi-
 nite metric to insure the invalidation is propagated throughout the local
 internet. This is a form of poison reverse.
 Routes in the kernel table that are added or changed as a result of ICMP
 Redirect messages are deleted after a while to minimize black-holes.
 When a TCP connection suffers a timeout, the kernel tells routed, which
 deletes all redirected routes through the gateway involved, advances the
 age of all RIP routes through the gateway to allow an alternate to be
 chosen, and advances of the age of any relevant Router Discovery Protocol
 default routes.
 Hosts acting as internetwork routers gratuitously supply their routing
 tables every 30 seconds to all directly connected hosts and networks.
 These RIP responses are sent to the broadcast address on nets that sup-
 port broadcasting, to the destination address on point-to-point links,
 and to the router's own address on other networks. If RIPv2 is enabled,
 multicast packets are sent on interfaces that support multicasting.
 If no response is received on a remote interface, if there are errors
 while sending responses, or if there are more errors than input or output
 (see netstat(8) ), then the cable or some other part of the interface is
 assumed to be disconnected or broken, and routes are adjusted appropri-
 ately.
 The Internet Router Discovery Protocol is handled similarly. When the
 daemon is supplying RIP routes, it also listens for Router Discovery
 Solicitations and sends Advertisements. When it is quiet and only lis-
 tening to other RIP routers, it sends Solicitations and listens for
 Advertisements. If it receives a good Advertisement, it stops listening
 for broadcast or multicast RIP responses. It tracks several advertising
 routers to speed recovery when the currently chosen router dies. If all
 discovered routers disappear, the daemon resumes listening to RIP
 responses.
 While using Router Discovery (which happens by default when the system
 has a single network interface and a Router Discover Advertisement is
 received), there is a single default route and a variable number of redi-
 rected host routes in the kernel table.
 The Router Discover standard requires that advertisements have a default
 "lifetime" of 30 minutes. That means should something happen, a client
 can be without a good route for 30 minutes. It is a good idea to reduce
 the default to 45 seconds using -P rdisc_interval=45 on the command line
 or rdisc_interval=45 in the /etc/gateways file.
 See the pm_rdisc facility described below to support "legacy" systems
 that can handle neither RIPv2 nor Router Discovery.
 By default, neither Router Discovery advertisements nor solicitations are
 sent over point to point links (e.g. PPP).
 Options supported by routed:
 -s this option forces routed to supply routing information. This is
 the default if multiple network interfaces are present on which
 RIP or Router Discovery have not been disabled, and if the kernel
 switch ipforwarding=1.
 -q is the opposite of the -s option.
 -d Do not run in the background. This option is meant for interac-
 tive use.
 -g This flag is used on internetwork routers to offer a route to the
 "default" destination. It is equivalent to -F 0/0,1 and is
 present mostly for historical reasons. A better choice is -P
 pm_rdisc on the command line or pm_rdisc in the /etc/gateways
 file. since a larger metric will be used, reducing the spread of
 the potentially dangerous default route. This is typically used
 on a gateway to the Internet, or on a gateway that uses another
 routing protocol whose routes are not reported to other local
 routers. Notice that because a metric of 1 is used, this feature
 is dangerous. It is more commonly accidently used to create
 chaos with routing loop than to solve problems.
 -h This causes host or point-to-point routes to not be advertised,
 provided there is a network route going the same direction. That
 is a limited kind of aggregation. This option is useful on gate-
 ways to ethernets that have other gateway machines connected with
 point-to-point links such as SLIP.
 -m This causes the machine to advertise a host or point-to-point
 route to its primary interface. It is useful on multi-homed
 machines such as NFS servers. This option should not be used
 except when the cost of the host routes it generates is justified
 by the popularity of the server. It is effective only when the
 machine is supplying routing information, because there is more
 than one interface. The -m option overrides the -q option to the
 limited extent of advertising the host route.
 -A do not ignore RIPv2 authentication if we do not care about RIPv2
 authentication. This option is required for conformance with RFC
 1723. However, it makes no sense and breaks using RIP as a dis-
 covery protocol to ignore all RIPv2 packets that carry authenti-
 cation when this machine does not care about authentication.
 -T tracefile
 increases the debugging level to at least 1 and causes debugging
 information to be appended to the trace file. Note that because
 of security concerns, it is wisest to not run routed routinely
 with tracing directed to a file.
 -t increases the debugging level, which causes more information to
 be logged on the tracefile specified with -T or standard out.
 The debugging level can be increased or decreased with the
 SIGUSR1 or SIGUSR2 signals.
 -F net[/mask][,metric]
 minimize routes in transmissions via interfaces with addresses
 that match net/mask, and synthesizes a default route to this
 machine with the metric. The intent is to reduce RIP traffic on
 slow, point-to-point links such as PPP links by replacing many
 large UDP packets of RIP information with a single, small packet
 containing a "fake" default route. If metric is absent, a value
 of 14 is assumed to limit the spread of the "fake" default route.
 This is a dangerous feature that when used carelessly can cause
 routing loops. Notice also that more than one interface can
 match the specified network number and mask. See also -g.
 -P parms
 is equivalent to adding the parameter line parms to the
 /etc/gateways file.
 Any other argument supplied is interpreted as the name of a file in which
 the actions of routed should be logged. It is better to use -T instead
 of appending the name of the trace file to the command.
 routed also supports the notion of "distant" passive or active gateways.
 When routed is started, it reads the file /etc/gateways to find such dis-
 tant gateways which may not be located using only information from a
 routing socket, to discover if some of the local gateways are passive,
 and to obtain other parameters. Gateways specified in this manner should
 be marked passive if they are not expected to exchange routing informa-
 tion, while gateways marked active should be willing to exchange RIP
 packets. Routes through passive gateways are installed in the kernel's
 routing tables once upon startup and are not included in transmitted RIP
 responses.
 Distant active gateways are treated like network interfaces. RIP
 responses are sent to the distant active gateway. If no responses are
 received, the associated route is deleted from the kernel table and RIP
 responses advertised via other interfaces. If the distant gateway
 resumes sending RIP responses, the associated route is restored.
 Such gateways can be useful on media that do not support broadcasts or
 multicasts but otherwise act like classic shared media like Ethernets
 such as some ATM networks. One can list all RIP routers reachable on the
 ATM network in /etc/gateways with a series of "host" lines.
 Gateways marked external are also passive, but are not placed in the ker-
 nel routing table nor are they included in routing updates. The function
 of external entries is to indicate that another routing process will
 install such a route if necessary, and that alternate routes to that des-
 tination should not be installed by routed. Such entries are only
 required when both routers may learn of routes to the same destination.
 The /etc/gateways file is comprised of a series of lines, each in one of
 the following formats or consist of parameters described below:
 net Nname[/mask] gateway Gname metric value <passive | active | extern>
 host Hname gateway Gname metric value <passive | active | extern>
 Nname or Hname is the name of the destination network or host. It may be
 a symbolic network name or an Internet address specified in "dot" nota-
 tion (see inet(3)  ). (If it is a name, then it must either be defined in
 /etc/networks or /etc/hosts, or named(8) , must have been started before
 routed.)
 mask is an optional number between 1 and 32 indicating the netmask asso-
 ciated with Nname.
 Gname is the name or address of the gateway to which RIP responses should
 be forwarded.
 Value is the hop count to the destination host or network. host hname
 is equivalent to net nname/32 .
 One of the keywords passive, active or external must be present to indi-
 cate whether the gateway should be treated as passive or active (as
 described above), or whether the gateway is external to the scope of the
 RIP protocol.
 Lines that start with neither "net" nor "host" must consist of one or
 more of the following parameter settings, separated by commas or blanks:
 if=ifname
 indicates that the other parameters on the line apply to the
 interface name ifname.
 subnet=nname[/mask][,metric]
 advertises a route to network nname with mask mask and the sup-
 plied metric (default 1). This is useful for filling "holes" in
 CIDR allocations. This parameter must appear by itself on a
 line.
 Do not use this feature unless necessary. It is dangerous.
 passwd=XXX
 specifies a RIPv2 password that will be included on all RIPv2
 responses sent and checked on all RIPv2 responses received. The
 password must not contain any blanks, tab characters, commas or
 '#' characters.
 no_ag turns off aggregation of subnets in RIPv1 and RIPv2 responses.
 no_super_ag
 turns off aggregation of networks into supernets in RIPv2
 responses.
 passive
 is equivalent no_rip no_rdisc.
 no_rip disables all RIP processing on the specified interface. If no
 interfaces are allowed to process RIP packets, routed acts purely
 as a router discovery daemon. No_rip is equivalent to
 no_ripv1_in no_ripv2_in no_ripv1_out no_ripv2_out.
 Note that turning off RIP without explicitly turning on router
 discovery advertisements with rdisc_adv or -s causes routed to
 act as a client router discovery daemon, not advertising.
 no_ripv1_in
 causes RIPv1 received responses to be ignored.
 no_ripv2_in
 causes RIPv2 received responses to be ignored.
 ripv2_out
 turns off RIPv1 output and causes RIPv2 advertisements to be mul-
 ticast when possible.
 no_rdisc
 disables the Internet Router Discovery Protocol.
 no_solicit
 disables the transmission of Router Discovery Solicitations.
 send_solicit
 specifies that Router Discovery solicitations should be sent,
 even on point-to-point links, which by default only listen to
 Router Discovery messages.
 no_rdisc_adv
 disables the transmission of Router Discovery Advertisements
 rdisc_adv
 specifies that Router Discovery advertisements should be sent,
 even on point-to-point links, which by default only listen to
 Router Discovery messages
 bcast_rdisc
 specifies that Router Discovery packets should be broadcast
 instead of multicast.
 rdisc_pref=N
 sets the preference in Router Discovery Advertisements to the
 integer N.
 rdisc_interval=N
 sets the nominal interval with which Router Discovery Advertise-
 ments are transmitted to N seconds and their lifetime to 3*N.
 fake_default=metric
 has an identical effect to -F net[/mask][,metric] with the net-
 work and mask coming from the specified interface.
 pm_rdisc
 is similar to fake_default. When RIPv2 routes are multicast, so
 that RIPv1 listeners cannot receive them, this feature causes a
 RIPv1 default route to be broadcast to RIPv1 listeners. Unless
 modified with fake_default, the default route is broadcast with a
 metric of 14. That serves as a "poor man's router discovery"
 protocol.
 Note that the netmask associated with point-to-point links (such as SLIP
 or PPP, with the IFF_POINTOPOINT flag) is used by routed to infer the
 netmask used by the remote system when RIPv1 is used.

FILES

 /etc/gateways for distant gateways

SEE ALSO

 udp(4) , icmp(4) .
 Internet Transport Protocols, XSIS 028112, Xerox System Integration
 Standard.

BUGS

 It does not always detect unidirectional failures in network interfaces
 (e.g., when the output side fails).

HISTORY

 The routed command appeared in 4.2BSD.
4.4BSD June 1, 1996 4.4BSD