How to display routing table in Linux

Network routing table in Linux are stored in the Routing Information Base (RIB) and could previously be viewed using the route and netstat -r command at the terminal. Both route and netstat are part of net-tools suite, which is now deprecated.

Both tools are still available for some systems though it is slowly being replaced by the iproute2 suite of tools.

1. Launch a terminal application.
2. Install iproute suite (optional, if your system don't already have it installed).

   $ sudo apt update && sudo apt install --assume-yes iproute2 # Ubuntu and Debian

3. View full network route information table using ip tool.

   $ ip route list
   default via 192.168.111.2 dev ens33 proto dhcp src 192.168.111.128 metric 100
   192.168.111.0/24 dev ens33 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.111.128
   192.168.111.2 dev ens33 proto dhcp scope link src 192.168.111.128 metric 100

4. View route information for specific network segment.

   $ ip route list 192.168.111.0/24
   192.168.111.0/24 dev ens33 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.111.128

5. Select particular route using grep.

   $ ip route list | grep ^default
   default via 192.168.111.2 dev ens33 proto dhcp src 192.168.111.128 metric 100

   This is useful for people who are used to grep rather than having to memorize all the switches for the ip route command.