Step 3: Examine the Forwarding Table

Purpose    

You can display the set of routes installed in the forwarding table to verify that the routing protocol process (rpd) has relayed the correct information into the forwarding table. This is especially important when there are network problems, such as connectivity. In this procedure, you verify that the routes displayed in Step 2 appear in the forwarding table for router R5.

Action

To examine the forwarding table for a router, enter the following CLI command:

user@host> show route forwarding-table destination destination-prefix

Sample Output

user@R5> show route forwarding-table destination 10.0.0.3    

Routing table: inet

Internet:

Destination        Type RtRef Next hop           Type Index NhRef Netif

10.0.0.3/32        user     0 10.1.15.0          ucst   285     7 so-0/0/1.0 

user@R5> show route forwarding-table destination 10.0.0.3 

Routing table: inet

Internet:

Destination        Type RtRef Next hop           Type Index NhRef Netif

10.0.0.3/32        user     0 10.1.56.0          ucst   281     9 so-0/0/0.0 

What It Means

The sample output shows the selected next hop between routers R5 and R3 sent from the inet routing table and installed into the forwarding table. The first instance shows the route through R1 and the second instance shows the route through R6. In both instances, the preferred route displayed in Step 2 is installed in the forwarding table.

In general, the sample output includes the destination address and destination type, the next-hop address and next-hop type, the number of references to the next hop, an index number into an internal next-hop database, and the interface used to reach the next hop.