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  • HOWTO quickly add a route in Mac OSX

HOWTO quickly add a route in Mac OSX

4 March 2012 — 26 Comments

Adding a route manually can be necessary sometimes. When on Linux, I know the command by head:

sudo route add -net 10.67.0.0/16 gw 192.168.120.254

On the Mac the command is similar, but a bit different 🙂 Just as a note to myself and anyone else interested:

sudo route -n add -net 10.67.0.0/16  192.168.120.254

This sets up a route to the 10.67.0.0/16 net through gateway 192.168.120.254. First one on Linux, second one on Mac OSX.

In Mac OSX , , , ,
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26 responses to HOWTO quickly add a route in Mac OSX

  1. 
    hamid (@hamiid) 11 October 2012 at 10:20

    Hi
    I have connected my Mac to a Linux box directly using a cable (no home router involved).
    In Mac, I am setting a static IP address to 10.10.11.13 with subnet mask 255.255.255.0 and in Linux 10.10.11.16 with same mask. My Mac has two NICs (2nd one is connected to router and WWW). How can I add a route in Mac so all the traffic intended for the Linux box goes through first NIC? I am interested in waking the Linux machine up using something like:

    $ wakeonlan -i 10.10.11.16 00:AA:BB:XX:XX

    Is this routing possible?

    Reply
  2. 
    Remi Bergsma 12 October 2012 at 14:04

    Hi Hamid,

    Since you have the Mac and the Linux box in the same subnet (10.10.11.x) and have a subnet of /24 you do not need a route to be able to talk to each other. The mac wil automatically use the correct interface due to the netmask being used.

    If you have a specific error message, please post it and I will have a look. From the info I have now I’d say this just works. The first thing that comes to mind when you’d encounter a problem is the cable connection. Did you use a cross-cable? Are the LEDs turned on?

    Good luck!

    Reply
    • 
      Roman 9 July 2013 at 05:41

      My mac mini is connected to the web through wifi (192.168.17.x). I don’t have control over the wifi net. I started playing with a router and connected it to the wired interface en0. I have a hard time connecting to 192.168.1.1 which is the routers default address. I set en0 manually to 192.168.1.10. I tried adding a route, but no go. Can you help?

      Reply
      • 
        Remi Bergsma 31 July 2013 at 23:01

        Did you already solve this issue? It does sound like a routing or netmask issue. If you tell a little more I might be able to help.

  3. 
    Leo 14 April 2013 at 01:25

    Hi Remi, I have the exact same basic question as Hamid although for a different purpose, i.e. How to route traffic destined for a specific ip through a specific interface when everything is on the same subnet. In my case I would like to use my mac’s wifi interface to connect to a network share as it is faster than using an ethernet cable for file transfers, but keep the rest of the traffic prioritised according to the order the interfaces are listed in Network system preferences.

    Reply
    • 
      Leo 14 April 2013 at 01:28

      I forgot to mention that I would like to be able to fallback to the ethernet interface if the wifi interface is disabled, thanks.

      Reply
      • 
        Leo 14 April 2013 at 03:35

        I figured that you can do this with an ip address using ‘sudo route add -host 192.168.1.2 -interface en1’ but that doesn’t work as the network share is accessed using it’s hostname myshare.local. Trying to route add -host myshare.local does not seem to work as although netstat -r shows a single entry for 192.168.1.2 assigned to en1, myshare.local only has an entry assigned to en0 😦

      • 
        Remi Bergsma 17 April 2013 at 23:24

        Hi Leo,
        Connecting to the same network multiple times, with the same ip addressing is confusing the OS and might give mixed results. The quick and dirty way to solve this, is to add another ip address to your server (say 10.0.0.1) and one to your wifi interface (say 10.0.0.2) and have the two communicate using the 10.0.0.0/24 network. That will assure the routing is correct. You can use the same interface cards and same wires. Just add these as alias ip addresses and you’ll be fine.

  4. 
    Forrest Gump (@BWgenInterests) 27 April 2013 at 23:20

    Hi Remi,

    Nice of you to share your knowledge, I have had something that’s been a consistent problem along the lines of this post that I’m hoping you have a suggestion about.

    I have two networks:
    a gigabit ethernet video editing network on a 192.168.1.x network (direct network, no outside connection)
    our standard corporate network on 10.130.x.x.

    Two Mac Pro’s have the network service order setup with the corporate network interface first (en1:DHCP) and the media network second (en0: 192.168.1.5 and 192.168.1.6). If I don’t put them in this order the internet doesn’t seem to work.

    The media server is also a Mac Pro with the en0 (192.168.1.2) and en1 (10.130.178.90) similarly setup.

    About 40% of the time the Mac Pros would connect to the media network over the slower 10.130 network… we figured out that if we used a GUI app called WaterRoof we could inject an ipfw command into the Mac Pros that blocks any connection to the media server on the corporate network (10.130.178.90).

    This worked great for a while, then suddenly today, the video started playing choppy again and I ended up having to disable the media server’s en1 to the corporate network to force the connection over the 192.168 network. Don’t know how it found it’s away around the IP block (perhaps connecting by share name ?) but I was wondering if creating a route would be a better answer… could you show me the syntax for that…
    do I need to do it on the Mac Pros AND the media server? Do I need to save it in some file for it to be permanent?

    Any help would be HUGELY appreciated!

    Reply
    • 
      Remi Bergsma 3 May 2013 at 21:51

      Hi,

      Interesting case! You could indeed add a route, so that even the corporate ip address will be reachable over the gigabit network.

      Try this on the Mac PRO’s:
      sudo route -n add -net 10.130.178.90/32 192.168.1.2

      And reversed on the Media server:
      sudo route -n add -net 10.130.178.x/32 192.168.1.5
      sudo route -n add -net 10.130.178.y/32 192.168.1.6

      netstat -nr gives an overview of current routes.

      This should make the Media server’s corporate ip address reachable through the gigabit network and vice versa.

      To make routes persistent, take a look at this post: http://nellen.it/blog/2012/01/permanent-static-routes-for-mac-os-x/

      Hope this helps 🙂

      Reply
  5. 
    Jacob Tomlinson 6 June 2014 at 15:35

    Hi, This only works until you reboot the machine. Then the route is lost.

    Reply
  6. 
    Naidu 24 October 2014 at 11:04

    My office has restricted access to Internet sites such as Skype & Dropbox. I also have access to an unrestricted Wi-Fi.

    The laptop is connected to both access points. Now my problem is, when en0 (ethernet) is my preferred channel then blocked sites like Skype won’t work though I have an active Wi-Fi connection. If I change the preferred channel to en1 (Wi-Fi) then Skype works but I cannot browse any of the company Intranet sites.

    Why does the fallback to Wi-Fior visa versa does not work?

    Here are my routing table entries using command netstat -nr:

    $ netstat -nr
    Routing tables

    Internet:
    Destination Gateway Flags Refs Use Netif Expire
    default 192.168.2.1 UGSc 23 0 en1
    default 172.16.8.1 UGScI 0 0 en0
    default link#6 UCSI 1 0 en3
    default link#8 UCSI 1 0 en14
    127 127.0.0.1 UCS 0 0 lo0
    127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 UH 3 151425 lo0
    169.254/30 link#6 UC 0 0 en3
    169.254 link#11 UCS 3 0 en1
    169.254 link#5 UCSI 0 0 en0
    169.254 link#6 UCSI 1 0 en3
    169.254 link#8 UCSI 1 0 en14
    169.254.0.1 36:bb:1f:5:b7:d6 UHLSW 1 498 en3 889
    169.254.0.2/32 link#6 UCS 0 0 en3
    169.254.0.4/30 link#8 UCS 0 0 en14
    169.254.0.5 96:eb:cd:3:8f:e4 UHLSW 5 38380 en14 325
    169.254.0.6/32 link#8 UCS 0 0 en14
    169.254.1.1 link#11 UHRLSW 0 16 en1
    169.254.1.5 link#11 UHRLSW 0 8 en1
    169.254.81.175 0:26:b9:9e:c6:e3 UHLSW 0 0 en0 1193
    172.16.8/23 link#5 UCS 2 0 en0
    172.16.8.1/32 link#5 UCS 1 0 en0
    172.16.8.1 68:5:ca:10:18:5 UHLWIir 1 0 en0 1073
    172.16.8.225 c:4d:e9:c3:51:8c UHLWI 0 0 en0 1190
    172.16.9.233/32 link#5 UCS 1 0 en0
    172.16.9.233 0:25:0:a4:fa:de UHLWI 0 1 lo0
    192.168.2 link#11 UCS 1 0 en1
    192.168.2.1/32 link#11 UCS 2 0 en1
    192.168.2.1 74:31:70:6f:c6:58 UHLWIir 26 224 en1 1160
    192.168.2.103 44:d8:84:8:85:e2 UHLWI 0 0 en1 692
    192.168.2.104/32 link#11 UCS 1 0 en1
    192.168.2.104 0:23:6c:97:46:a3 UHLWI 0 1 lo0
    239.255.255.250 1:0:5e:7f:ff:fa UHmLWI 0 5 en3
    239.255.255.250 1:0:5e:7f:ff:fa UHmLWI 0 19 en14

    Reply
  7. 
    Arthur Hoek 20 March 2015 at 11:13

    Hee Remi, dit bericht is het eerste zoekresultaat als je in Google op “mac route add” zoekt. Na drie jaar nog nuttig in ieder geval 🙂

    Reply
  8. 
    Guillaume Soucy 25 August 2015 at 23:39

    Hi,

    I need some help for make the route permanent on OS X Yosemite if possible.

    Thanks,

    Guillaume

    Reply
  9. 
    Christian 16 February 2016 at 12:18

    Hi,

    I need some help for make the route permanent on OS X ElCapitan.
    Thanks,

    Christian

    Reply
  10. 
    Nathan 21 March 2016 at 20:17

    Thank you 🙂

    Reply
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    jual selempang penghargaan 25 May 2017 at 08:56

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    or even a blog from start to end.

    Reply
  12. 
    tom 6 September 2017 at 09:49

    Hi, I have this issue, maybe you’ve experienced with similar case:

    I’m using mac.
    I connect to my local wifi, and need to connect to local FTP server.
    I also need to browsing the internet.
    Unfortunately our local internet connection is not really good.
    I plan to use my phone internet connection because it is faster.

    The question:
    How I can keep connect to my local FTP server,
    and also do internet browsing, tethering with my phone?

    thank you

    Reply
  13. 
    tomfreakz 6 September 2017 at 09:50

    Hi, I have this issue, maybe you’ve experienced with similar case:

    I’m using mac.
    I connect to my local wifi, and need to connect to local FTP server.
    I also need to browsing the internet.
    Unfortunately our local internet connection is not really good.
    I plan to use my phone internet connection because it is faster.

    The question:
    How I can keep connect to my local FTP server,
    and also do internet browsing, tethering with my phone?

    thank you

    Reply
  14. 
    aratik711 9 February 2018 at 13:57

    Reblogged this on A Passionate Techie.

    Reply
  15. 
    Lawrence Wesley Jones 25 April 2018 at 22:23

    Hi, I have two NICs connected to my MAC and I would like to communicate from one NIC to the other. That is, Have my MAC functions as both a client and server for pings, FTP uploads/downloads. Can this be done?

    Reply
  16. 
    Jake 26 July 2018 at 18:14

    Thanks man! I hate to admit I look for this page every time I need to add a route on my mac…

    Reply
  17. 
    Angel 3 January 2020 at 10:54

    Thanks for sharing

    Reply

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