ICMP Redirect
Today I found out where Linux exposes the extra routing information gathered from ICMP redirects. ip route show cache will show the entire cached routing table. It’s a bit hard to read so ip route show cache 1.2.3.4 is better. For example 192.168.1.0/24 is a network the is connected via a host on my 192.168.0/24 network. My default gateway (192.168.0.1) has a static routing entry to the host who gateways for the 192.168.1.0/24 network (192.168.0.57). So When a random host on the 192.168.0.0/24 network pings a host on the 192.168.1.0/24 network it first sends to 192.168.0.1 but it sends an ICMP redirect saying that in the future it would be better to just send direct to 192.168.0.57 in the future.
$ ip route show cache 192.168.1.20
$ ping 192.168.1.20
PING 192.168.1.20 (192.168.1.20) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.1.20: icmp_seq=1 ttl=63 time=2.25 ms
From 192.168.0.1: icmp_seq=2 Redirect Host(New nexthop: 192.168.0.57)
64 bytes from 192.168.1.20: icmp_seq=2 ttl=63 time=2.34 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.20: icmp_seq=3 ttl=63 time=1.32 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.20: icmp_seq=4 ttl=63 time=1.24 ms
^C
--- 192.168.1.20 ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3012ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 1.241/1.791/2.344/0.511 ms
$
$ ip route show cache 192.168.1.20
192.168.1.20 from 192.168.0.62 via 192.168.0.57 dev eth1
cache mtu 1500 advmss 1460 hoplimit 64
192.168.1.20 via 192.168.0.57 dev eth1 src 192.168.0.62
cache mtu 1500 advmss 1460 hoplimit 64
$
The Guide to IP Layer Network Administration with Linux is an excellent guide!
