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RTENTRY(9)		    Kernel Developer's Manual		      RTENTRY(9)

NAME
     rtentry -- structure of an entry in the kernel routing table

SYNOPSIS
     #include <sys/types.h>
     #include <sys/socket.h>
     #include <net/route.h>

DESCRIPTION
     The kernel provides a common mechanism by which all protocols can store and
     retrieve  entries	from a central table of routes.  Parts of this mechanism
     are also used to interact with user-level processes by means of a socket in
     the route(4) pseudo-protocol family.  The <net/route.h> header file defines
     the structures and manifest constants used in this facility.

     The basic structure of a route is defined by struct rtentry, which includes
     the following fields:

	   struct radix_node rt_nodes[2];
		   Glue used by the radix-tree routines.  These members also in-
		   clude in their substructure the key	(i.e.,	destination  ad-
		   dress)  and	mask  used  when  the  route  was  created.  The
		   rt_key(rt) and rt_mask(rt) macros can be used to extract this
		   information (in the form of a  struct  sockaddr  *)	given  a
		   struct rtentry *.

	   struct sockaddr *rt_gateway;
		   The	"target" of the route, which can either represent a des-
		   tination in its own right (some protocols will  put	a  link-
		   layer  address here), or some intermediate stop on the way to
		   that destination (if the RTF_GATEWAY flag is set).

	   int rt_flags;
		   See below.  If the RTF_UP flag is not present,  the	rtfree()
		   function  will  delete the route from the radix tree when the
		   last reference drops.

	   int rt_refcnt;
		   Route entries are reference-counted; this field indicates the
		   number of external (to the radix tree) references.

	   struct ifnet *rt_ifp;

	   struct ifaddr *rt_ifa;
		   These two fields represent the "answer", as it were,  to  the
		   question  posed by a route lookup; that is, they name the in-
		   terface and interface address to be used in sending a  packet
		   to  the  destination  or set of destinations which this route
		   represents.

	   u_long rt_mtu;
		   See description of rmx_mtu below.

	   u_long rt_weight;
		   See description of rmx_weight below.

	   u_long rt_expire;
		   See description of rmx_expire below.

	   counter64_t rt_pksent;
		   See description of rmx_pksent below.

	   struct rtentry *rt_gwroute;
		   This member is a reference to a route  whose  destination  is
		   rt_gateway.	It is only used for RTF_GATEWAY routes.

	   struct mtx rt_mtx;
		   Mutex to lock this routing entry.

     The following flag bits are defined:
	   RTF_UP	  The route is not deleted.
	   RTF_GATEWAY	  The  route  points  to an intermediate destination and
			  not  the  ultimate  recipient;  the	rt_gateway   and
			  rt_gwroute fields name that destination.
	   RTF_HOST	  This is a host route.
	   RTF_REJECT	  The destination is presently unreachable.  This should
			  result in an EHOSTUNREACH error from output routines.
	   RTF_DYNAMIC	  This route was created dynamically by rtredirect().
	   RTF_MODIFIED   This route was modified by rtredirect().
	   RTF_DONE	  Used	only  in  the route(4) protocol, indicating that
			  the request was executed.
	   RTF_XRESOLVE   When this route is returned as a result of  a  lookup,
			  send	a  report  on  the route(4) interface requesting
			  that an external process perform resolution  for  this
			  route.
	   RTF_STATIC	  Indicates  that this route was manually added by means
			  of the route(8) command.
	   RTF_BLACKHOLE  Requests that output sent via this route be discarded.
	   RTF_PROTO1
	   RTF_PROTO2
	   RTF_PROTO3	  Protocol-specific.
	   RTF_PINNED	  Indicates that this route is immutable  to  a  routing
			  protocol.
	   RTF_LOCAL	  Indicates that the destination of this route is an ad-
			  dress configured as belonging to this system.
	   RTF_BROADCAST  Indicates that the destination is a broadcast address.
	   RTF_MULTICAST  Indicates that the destination is a multicast address.

     Several  metrics are supplied in struct rt_metrics passed with routing con-
     trol messages via route(4) API.  Currently only  rmx_mtu,	rmx_expire,  and
     rmx_pksent metrics are supplied.  All others are ignored.

     The following metrics are defined by struct rt_metrics:

	   u_long rmx_locks;
		   Flag  bits indicating which metrics the kernel is not permit-
		   ted to dynamically modify.

	   u_long rmx_mtu;
		   MTU for this path.

	   u_long rmx_hopcount;
		   Number of intermediate systems on the path to  this	destina-
		   tion.

	   u_long rmx_expire;
		   The time (a la time(3)) at which this route should expire, or
		   zero  if it should never expire.  It is the responsibility of
		   individual protocol suites to ensure that routes are actually
		   deleted once they expire.

	   u_long rmx_recvpipe;
		   Nominally, the bandwidth-delay product for the path from  the
		   destination	to this system.  In practice, this value is used
		   to set the size of the receive buffer (and thus the window in
		   sliding-window protocols like TCP).

	   u_long rmx_sendpipe;
		   As before, but in the opposite direction.

	   u_long rmx_ssthresh;
		   The slow-start threshold used in TCP congestion-avoidance.

	   u_long rmx_rtt;
		   The	round-trip  time  to  this  destination,  in  units   of
		   RMX_RTTUNIT per second.

	   u_long rmx_rttvar;
		   The average deviation of the round-trip time to this destina-
		   tion, in units of RMX_RTTUNIT per second.

	   u_long rmx_pksent;
		   A count of packets successfully sent via this route.

	   u_long rmx_filler[4];
		   Empty space available for protocol-specific information.

SEE ALSO
     route(4), route(8)

HISTORY
     The rtentry structure first appeared in 4.2BSD.  The radix-tree representa-
     tion  of  the  routing table and the rt_metrics structure first appeared in
     4.3BSD-Reno.

AUTHORS
     This manual page was written by Garrett Wollman.

BUGS
     There are a number of historical relics remaining in this	interface.   The
     rt_gateway and rmx_filler fields could be named better.

FreeBSD 15.1			  March 5, 2014 		      RTENTRY(9)

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