169.254.0.0/16 – Disable ZEROCONF Route

You may notice that in your routing table you have a route 169.254.0.0/16.

It is so called ZEROCONF route.

Every time the system boots, the ZEROCONF route (169.254.0.0/16) is enabled and added to the routing table.

And it is time to get rid of it.

Cool Tip: Scan a network with the ping command only! Discover all the active computers in your LAN! Read more →

Sample output of the ip route command with the enabled ZEROCONF route:

$ ip route
169.254.0.0/16 dev eth0  scope link  metric 1002
default via 192.168.0.1 dev eth0

Sample output of the route -n command with the enabled ZEROCONF route:

$ route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
169.254.0.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.0.0     U     1002   0        0 eth0
0.0.0.0        192.168.0.1       0.0.0.0         UG    0      0        0 eth0

To disable the ZEROCONF route during the system boot so that the system will boot without the 169.254.0.0/16 route, just edited the file /etc/sysconfig/network:

$ vi /etc/sysconfig/network

And add the following line:

NOZEROCONF=yes

Restart the network to apply modifications:

$ service network restart

Repeat the ip route or route -n command to ensure that the 169.254.0.0/16 route is removed from the routing table.

Cool Tip: Find out the public IP address of a server from the Linux command line! Really simple! Read more →

$ ip route
default via 192.168.0.1 dev eth0
$ route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
0.0.0.0        192.168.0.1       0.0.0.0         UG    0      0        0 eth0
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