Skip to main content

macos - How does Mac OSX prioritize network interfaces when routing?


To give a concrete example, how does OSX choose which of these default entries from netstat -nr to route to?


Destination        Gateway            Flags        Refs      Use   Netif Expire
0/1 10.10.99.100 UGSc 0 0 ppp0
default 192.168.1.1 UGSc 5 0 en0
default 192.168.1.1 UGScI 1 0 en1
default 192.0.2.1 UGScI 157 2 ppp0

From what I have been able to tell OSX uses metrics on its interfaces rather than on its routing table entries. But by default all of those interface metrics are 0 so how does it choose? Last created interface?


I've seen some folks suggest its the order in the Network preferences, but in my case the ppp0 interface (from SonicWall NetExtender) isn't listed there.


There is some discussion in this thread, but no answer that I see.



Answer



Most systems follows these rules when choosing which route to use:



  • Find the most specific ones (i.e. the ones with the longest matching prefix).

  • Choose the one with the highest priority.


On Linux (and, I think, on Windows) priority is determined by metric, but it is not the case on macOS as you correctly pointed out. Instead of assigning metrics to individual routes, macOS assigns priorities to interfaces. You can use networksetup -listnetworkserviceorder to view this order and networksetup -ordernetworkservices to change it.


Now, this route from your output makes me think that in your case specificity also plays its role:


Destination        Gateway            Flags        Refs      Use   Netif Expire
0/1 10.10.99.100 UGSc 0 0 ppp0

This route covers the bottom half of the address space and therefore I would expect to also find:


128.0/1            10.10.99.100       UGSc            0        0    ppp0

in your routing table. This is a standard trick VPN software uses to prioritise its routes over default: it adds two routes which together cover all IP addresses, but each of them is more specific than default, so they win.


Comments

Popular Posts

How do I transmit a single hexadecimal value serial data in PuTTY using an Alt code?

I am trying to sent a specific hexadecimal value across a serial COM port using PuTTY. Specifically, I want to send the hex codes 9C, B6, FC, and 8B. I have looked up the Alt codes for these and they are 156, 182, 252, and 139 respectively. However, whenever I input the Alt codes, a preceding hex value of C2 is sent before 9C, B6, and 8B so the values that are sent are C2 9C, C2 B6, and C2 8B. The value for FC is changed to C3 FC. Why are these values being placed before the hex value and why is FC being changed altogether? To me, it seems like there is a problem internally converting the Alt code to hex. Is there a way to directly input hex values without using Alt codes in PuTTY? Answer What you're seeing is just ordinary text character set conversion. As far as PuTTY is concerned, you are typing (and reading) text , not raw binary data, therefore it has to convert the text to bytes in whatever configured character set before sending it over the wire. In other words, when y...

linux - Extract/save a mail attachment using bash

Using normal bash tools (ie, built-ins or commonly-available command-line tools), is it possible, and how to extract/save attachments on emails? For example, say I have a nightly report which arrives via email but is a zip archive of several log files. I want to save all those zips into a backup directory. How would I accomplish that? Answer If you're aiming for portability, beware that there are several different versions of mail(1) and mailx(1) . There's a POSIX mailx command, but with very few requirements. And none of the implementations I have seem to parse attachments anyway. You might have the mpack package . Its munpack command saves all parts of a MIME message into separate files, then all you have to do is save the interesting parts and clean up the rest. There's also metamail . An equivalent of munpack is metamail -wy .

performance - Single Threaded Qaud Core v.s Hyper-Threading Dual Core

Let's say we have two CPUs, One is Quad Core 3.2 Ghz with 4 Cores, and We have a Dual Core 3.2 Ghz with 2 Cores with 2 threads in each Core (Hyper-Threading). My assumption as a programmer will be, the 4 cores 4 threads should perform faster than 2 cores 4 threads since the second CPU needs to switch between threads in order to emulate 4 cores while the first one doesn't need to perform such switching as each core can perform independently and individually. I want to confirm that my assumption is true, if not please explain why one is better than the other. Answer I do believe thats true - since hyper threading does share some elements - specifically the main execution resources, you'll be able to run 4 full threads at once, rather than waiting for those resources to be freed up. The point of HT is to get better performance with a smaller use of die area - your quad core would generally be a bigger chip - say almost twice as large, than a non HT dual core chip, while a HT...

freeze - How do I stop windows 8.1 from freezing when the screen locks

This happens to me on a regular basis if I leave the computer for upwards of 10 minutes. It didnt do so at first but started after a couple of days. This is possibly related to further windows updates although nothing seems to tie in obviously when looking at my update history. I have to hold the power button in to power off. If the screens have switched off aswell they wont come back on, if they haven't I see the login picture and can move the mouse pointer but nothing happens and no combination of keyboard mashes or mouse clicks lets me see the login prompt. In the event log (type event viewer into the start menu) under system before every Critical problem (me powering down the machine without restarting) I get distributedCOM errors talking about this guid: "The server {BF6C1E47-86EC-4194-9CE5-13C15DCB2001} did not register with DCOM within the required timeout." I also get the same error for this 1B1F472E-3221-4826-97DB-2C2324D389AE. This seems to be a common theme and...