How to Find Default Gateway in Linux

By
SK

A gateway is a node or a router that acts as an access point to pass network data from local networks to remote networks. There are many ways to find out your gateway in Linux. So, You can get the answer to “How to Find Default Gateway in Linux” from this article.

Here are some of them from Terminal.

You can find the default gateway using ip, route, and netstat commands in Linux systems.

Find Default Gateway in Linux Using route command

Open up your terminal and type the following commands:

[email protected]:~$ route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
0.0.0.0         192.168.1.1     0.0.0.0         UG    0      0        0 eth1
192.168.1.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0   U     1      0        0 eth1

The above output shows my default gateway is 192.168.1.1. UG stands for the network link is Up and G stands for Gateway.

Find Default Gateway in Linux Using IP route

Use the following command:

[email protected]:~$ ip route show
default via 192.168.1.1 dev eth1  proto static 
192.168.1.0/24 dev eth1  proto kernel  scope link  src 192.168.1.100  metric 1

Find Default Gateway in Linux Using netstat

Use the following command:

[email protected]:~$ netstat -rn
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags   MSS Window  irtt Iface
0.0.0.0         192.168.1.1     0.0.0.0         UG        0 0          0 eth1
192.168.1.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0   U         0 0          0 eth1

And finally you can view it using the eth config files. If your network interface is eth0, then the command should be:

In RHEL based systems:

[[email protected] ~]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
DEVICE="eth0"
BOOTPROTO=none
NM_CONTROLLED="yes"
ONBOOT=yes
TYPE="Ethernet"
UUID="bcb0a409-d7d4-4f2f-882f-ec46e07e670d"
HWADDR=08:00:27:A6:0C:AC
IPADDR=192.168.1.200
PREFIX=24
GATEWAY=192.168.1.1
DNS1=8.8.8.8
DNS2=192.168.1.200
DEFROUTE=yes
IPV4_FAILURE_FATAL=yes
IPV6INIT=no
NAME="System eth0"

And for Debian based systems, use the following command:

[email protected]:~$ cat /etc/network/interfaces 
# interfaces(5) file used by ifup(8) and ifdown(8)
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.100
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.1.0
broadcast 192.168.1.255
gateway 192.168.1.1

That’s it.

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