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Subject: Re: route command w/o metrics (why?)
In-Reply-To: <199606030821.KAA04825@gilberto.physik.rwth-aachen.de>
From: Motonori Shindou <T0682740@pmail.tepco.co.jp>
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Date: 3 Jun 96 21:13:20 JST
To: kuku@gilberto.physik.rwth-aachen.de
Cc: freebsd-questions@freefall.freebsd.org
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Hi,

> Just out of curiousity: Why does the BSD route command not require
> a metrics parameter? It happened to me that I forgot to give
> the metric on a HP-UX machine resulting in the fact that the
> gateway did not get the G flag (netstat -r) and it took me a hell of
> a time to find it out. 

My understanding:

  Even in the system that requires metric parameter in route command 
  (e.g. SunOS), "metric" doesn't mean much. It just has a meaning whether
  it's zero or non-zero. The former creates a routing table for 
  directly-connected host/network (without -G flag) while the 
  latter creates one for not-directly-connected (with -G flag). It 
  doesn't matter whether the metric is 1, 2, 3 or whatever greater than
  zero. This is probably the reason why recent system (including FreeBSD) 
  doesn't require metric parameter in the route command. Since a routing 
  table for a directly connected network is created when the interface
  is initiallized with ifconfig command, 'route add' comamnd creates 
  an entry for not-directed-connected host/network in the routing table.  

Is this understanding correct? Is there any usage of the metric 
parameter in route add command? One possibility is the case it's
compared with the metric exchanged by RIP, but I'm not sure...


===
Motonori Shindou
Tokyo Electric Power Comany, Inc.