xref: /freebsd/share/man/man4/route.4 (revision 97759ccc715c4b365432c16d763c50eecfcb1100)
1 .\" Copyright (c) 1990, 1991, 1993
2 .\"	The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.
3 .\"
4 .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
5 .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
6 .\" are met:
7 .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
8 .\"    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
9 .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
10 .\"    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
11 .\"    documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
12 .\" 3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors
13 .\"    may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
14 .\"    without specific prior written permission.
15 .\"
16 .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
17 .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
18 .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
19 .\" ARE DISCLAIMED.  IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
20 .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
21 .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
22 .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
23 .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
24 .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
25 .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
26 .\" SUCH DAMAGE.
27 .\"
28 .Dd November 4, 2004
29 .Dt ROUTE 4
30 .Os
31 .Sh NAME
32 .Nm route
33 .Nd kernel packet forwarding database
34 .Sh SYNOPSIS
35 .In sys/types.h
36 .In sys/time.h
37 .In sys/socket.h
38 .In net/if.h
39 .In net/route.h
40 .Ft int
41 .Fn socket PF_ROUTE SOCK_RAW "int family"
42 .Sh DESCRIPTION
43 .Fx
44 provides some packet routing facilities.
45 The kernel maintains a routing information database, which
46 is used in selecting the appropriate network interface when
47 transmitting packets.
48 .Pp
49 A user process (or possibly multiple co-operating processes)
50 maintains this database by sending messages over a special kind
51 of socket.
52 This supplants fixed size
53 .Xr ioctl 2 Ns 's
54 used in earlier releases.
55 Routing table changes may only be carried out by the super user.
56 .Pp
57 The operating system may spontaneously emit routing messages in response
58 to external events, such as receipt of a re-direct, or failure to
59 locate a suitable route for a request.
60 The message types are described in greater detail below.
61 .Pp
62 Routing database entries come in two flavors: for a specific
63 host, or for all hosts on a generic subnetwork (as specified
64 by a bit mask and value under the mask.
65 The effect of wildcard or default route may be achieved by using
66 a mask of all zeros, and there may be hierarchical routes.
67 .Pp
68 When the system is booted and addresses are assigned
69 to the network interfaces, each protocol family
70 installs a routing table entry for each interface when it is ready for traffic.
71 Normally the protocol specifies the route
72 through each interface as a
73 .Dq direct
74 connection to the destination host
75 or network.
76 If the route is direct, the transport layer of
77 a protocol family usually requests the packet be sent to the
78 same host specified in the packet.
79 Otherwise, the interface
80 is requested to address the packet to the gateway listed in the routing entry
81 (i.e., the packet is forwarded).
82 .Pp
83 When routing a packet,
84 the kernel will attempt to find
85 the most specific route matching the destination.
86 (If there are two different mask and value-under-the-mask pairs
87 that match, the more specific is the one with more bits in the mask.
88 A route to a host is regarded as being supplied with a mask of
89 as many ones as there are bits in the destination).
90 If no entry is found, the destination is declared to be unreachable,
91 and a routing-miss message is generated if there are any
92 listeners on the routing control socket described below.
93 .Pp
94 A wildcard routing entry is specified with a zero
95 destination address value, and a mask of all zeroes.
96 Wildcard routes will be used
97 when the system fails to find other routes matching the
98 destination.
99 The combination of wildcard
100 routes and routing redirects can provide an economical
101 mechanism for routing traffic.
102 .Pp
103 One opens the channel for passing routing control messages
104 by using the socket call shown in the synopsis above:
105 .Pp
106 The
107 .Fa family
108 parameter may be
109 .Dv AF_UNSPEC
110 which will provide
111 routing information for all address families, or can be restricted
112 to a specific address family by specifying which one is desired.
113 There can be more than one routing socket open per system.
114 .Pp
115 Messages are formed by a header followed by a small
116 number of sockaddrs (now variable length particularly
117 in the
118 .Tn ISO
119 case), interpreted by position, and delimited
120 by the new length entry in the sockaddr.
121 An example of a message with four addresses might be an
122 .Tn ISO
123 redirect:
124 Destination, Netmask, Gateway, and Author of the redirect.
125 The interpretation of which address are present is given by a
126 bit mask within the header, and the sequence is least significant
127 to most significant bit within the vector.
128 .Pp
129 Any messages sent to the kernel are returned, and copies are sent
130 to all interested listeners.
131 The kernel will provide the process
132 ID for the sender, and the sender may use an additional sequence
133 field to distinguish between outstanding messages.
134 However, message replies may be lost when kernel buffers are exhausted.
135 .Pp
136 The kernel may reject certain messages, and will indicate this
137 by filling in the
138 .Ar rtm_errno
139 field.
140 The routing code returns
141 .Er EEXIST
142 if
143 requested to duplicate an existing entry,
144 .Er ESRCH
145 if
146 requested to delete a non-existent entry,
147 or
148 .Er ENOBUFS
149 if insufficient resources were available
150 to install a new route.
151 In the current implementation, all routing processes run locally,
152 and the values for
153 .Ar rtm_errno
154 are available through the normal
155 .Em errno
156 mechanism, even if the routing reply message is lost.
157 .Pp
158 A process may avoid the expense of reading replies to
159 its own messages by issuing a
160 .Xr setsockopt 2
161 call indicating that the
162 .Dv SO_USELOOPBACK
163 option
164 at the
165 .Dv SOL_SOCKET
166 level is to be turned off.
167 A process may ignore all messages from the routing socket
168 by doing a
169 .Xr shutdown 2
170 system call for further input.
171 .Pp
172 If a route is in use when it is deleted,
173 the routing entry will be marked down and removed from the routing table,
174 but the resources associated with it will not
175 be reclaimed until all references to it are released.
176 User processes can obtain information about the routing
177 entry to a specific destination by using a
178 .Dv RTM_GET
179 message, or by calling
180 .Xr sysctl 3 .
181 .Pp
182 Messages include:
183 .Bd -literal
184 #define	RTM_ADD		0x1    /* Add Route */
185 #define	RTM_DELETE	0x2    /* Delete Route */
186 #define	RTM_CHANGE	0x3    /* Change Metrics, Flags, or Gateway */
187 #define	RTM_GET		0x4    /* Report Information */
188 #define	RTM_LOSING	0x5    /* Kernel Suspects Partitioning */
189 #define	RTM_REDIRECT	0x6    /* Told to use different route */
190 #define	RTM_MISS	0x7    /* Lookup failed on this address */
191 #define	RTM_LOCK	0x8    /* fix specified metrics */
192 #define	RTM_RESOLVE	0xb    /* request to resolve dst to LL addr - unused */
193 #define	RTM_NEWADDR	0xc    /* address being added to iface */
194 #define	RTM_DELADDR	0xd    /* address being removed from iface */
195 #define	RTM_IFINFO	0xe    /* iface going up/down etc. */
196 #define	RTM_NEWMADDR	0xf    /* mcast group membership being added to if */
197 #define	RTM_DELMADDR	0x10   /* mcast group membership being deleted */
198 #define	RTM_IFANNOUNCE	0x11   /* iface arrival/departure */
199 #define	RTM_IEEE80211	0x12   /* IEEE80211 wireless event */
200 .Ed
201 .Pp
202 A message header consists of one of the following:
203 .Bd -literal
204 struct rt_msghdr {
205     u_short rtm_msglen;         /* to skip over non-understood messages */
206     u_char  rtm_version;        /* future binary compatibility */
207     u_char  rtm_type;           /* message type */
208     u_short rtm_index;          /* index for associated ifp */
209     int     rtm_flags;          /* flags, incl. kern & message, e.g. DONE */
210     int     rtm_addrs;          /* bitmask identifying sockaddrs in msg */
211     pid_t   rtm_pid;            /* identify sender */
212     int     rtm_seq;            /* for sender to identify action */
213     int     rtm_errno;          /* why failed */
214     int     rtm_fmask;          /* bitmask used in RTM_CHANGE message */
215     u_long  rtm_inits;          /* which metrics we are initializing */
216     struct  rt_metrics rtm_rmx;	/* metrics themselves */
217 };
218 
219 struct if_msghdr {
220     u_short ifm_msglen;         /* to skip over non-understood messages */
221     u_char  ifm_version;        /* future binary compatibility */
222     u_char  ifm_type;           /* message type */
223     int     ifm_addrs;          /* like rtm_addrs */
224     int     ifm_flags;          /* value of if_flags */
225     u_short ifm_index;          /* index for associated ifp */
226     struct  if_data ifm_data;   /* statistics and other data about if */
227 };
228 
229 struct ifa_msghdr {
230     u_short ifam_msglen;        /* to skip over non-understood messages */
231     u_char  ifam_version;       /* future binary compatibility */
232     u_char  ifam_type;          /* message type */
233     int     ifam_addrs;         /* like rtm_addrs */
234     int     ifam_flags;         /* value of ifa_flags */
235     u_short ifam_index;         /* index for associated ifp */
236     int     ifam_metric;        /* value of ifa_metric */
237 };
238 
239 struct ifma_msghdr {
240     u_short ifmam_msglen;       /* to skip over non-understood messages */
241     u_char  ifmam_version;      /* future binary compatibility */
242     u_char  ifmam_type;         /* message type */
243     int     ifmam_addrs;        /* like rtm_addrs */
244     int     ifmam_flags;        /* value of ifa_flags */
245     u_short ifmam_index;        /* index for associated ifp */
246 };
247 
248 struct if_announcemsghdr {
249 	u_short	ifan_msglen;	/* to skip over non-understood messages */
250 	u_char	ifan_version;	/* future binary compatibility */
251 	u_char	ifan_type;	/* message type */
252 	u_short	ifan_index;	/* index for associated ifp */
253 	char	ifan_name[IFNAMSIZ]; /* if name, e.g. "en0" */
254 	u_short	ifan_what;	/* what type of announcement */
255 };
256 .Ed
257 .Pp
258 The
259 .Dv RTM_IFINFO
260 message uses a
261 .Ar if_msghdr
262 header, the
263 .Dv RTM_NEWADDR
264 and
265 .Dv RTM_DELADDR
266 messages use a
267 .Ar ifa_msghdr
268 header, the
269 .Dv RTM_NEWMADDR
270 and
271 .Dv RTM_DELMADDR
272 messages use a
273 .Vt ifma_msghdr
274 header, the
275 .Dv RTM_IFANNOUNCE
276 message uses a
277 .Vt if_announcemsghdr
278 header,
279 and all other messages use the
280 .Ar rt_msghdr
281 header.
282 .Pp
283 The
284 .Dq Li "struct rt_metrics"
285 and the flag bits are as defined in
286 .Xr rtentry 9 .
287 .Pp
288 Specifiers for metric values in rmx_locks and rtm_inits are:
289 .Bd -literal
290 #define	RTV_MTU       0x1    /* init or lock _mtu */
291 #define	RTV_HOPCOUNT  0x2    /* init or lock _hopcount */
292 #define	RTV_EXPIRE    0x4    /* init or lock _expire */
293 #define	RTV_RPIPE     0x8    /* init or lock _recvpipe */
294 #define	RTV_SPIPE     0x10   /* init or lock _sendpipe */
295 #define	RTV_SSTHRESH  0x20   /* init or lock _ssthresh */
296 #define	RTV_RTT       0x40   /* init or lock _rtt */
297 #define	RTV_RTTVAR    0x80   /* init or lock _rttvar */
298 #define	RTV_WEIGHT    0x100  /* init or lock _weight */
299 .Ed
300 .Pp
301 Specifiers for which addresses are present in the messages are:
302 .Bd -literal
303 #define RTA_DST       0x1    /* destination sockaddr present */
304 #define RTA_GATEWAY   0x2    /* gateway sockaddr present */
305 #define RTA_NETMASK   0x4    /* netmask sockaddr present */
306 #define RTA_GENMASK   0x8    /* cloning mask sockaddr present - unused */
307 #define RTA_IFP       0x10   /* interface name sockaddr present */
308 #define RTA_IFA       0x20   /* interface addr sockaddr present */
309 #define RTA_AUTHOR    0x40   /* sockaddr for author of redirect */
310 #define RTA_BRD       0x80   /* for NEWADDR, broadcast or p-p dest addr */
311 .Ed
312 .Sh SEE ALSO
313 .Xr sysctl 3 ,
314 .Xr route 8 ,
315 .Xr rtentry 9
316 .Pp
317 The constants for the
318 .Va rtm_flags
319 field are documented in the manual page for the
320 .Xr route 8
321 utility.
322 .Sh HISTORY
323 A
324 .Dv PF_ROUTE
325 protocol family first appeared in
326 .Bx 4.3 reno .
327