Understanding Flags, Refs, Use, Expire in Routing Table

[Jerry McAllister]

On Fri, Mar 28, 2008 at 09:48:28AM -0700, Kevin Oberman wrote:

> > From: Robert Jesacher <jessy at sicha.net>
> > Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2008 16:39:31 +0100
> > Sender: owner-freebsd-net at freebsd.org
> > 
> > Hi Daniel,
> > 
> > you find mostl of you questions answered in "man netstat" (the  
> > relevant passage is posted below)
> > The missing part is the expiry, which IMHO are the seconds, the ARP  
> > entry is valid (after this time a new arp request would be issued)
> > 
> > I hope this is the information you needed.
> 

Isn't everything?!
> It makes following a thread really hard. It's all (mostly) Microsoft's fault!
> > Why?
> > > I wish people would stop top-posting!

> 
> The Expire entry is the result of FreeBSD's unfortunate co-mingling
> network layer routing information with layer 2 ARP information. The only
> entries with "Expire" values are actually ARP entries. (Note the MAC
> address os "Gateway".)
> 
> Expire is in seconds remaining until the entry expires and is no longer
> used.
> -- 
> R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
> Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
> Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
> E-mail: oberman at es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634
> Key fingerprint:059B 2DDF 031C 9BA3 14A4  EADA 927D EBB3 987B 3751