Sometimes you need to create static route entries to make communication with different networks that are connected via a different gateway. A gateway is simply a network router that routes the network traffic between different networks. When you have more than one gateway (router) on your network, then you may need to implement static route technique on Windows 10/Windows 11 or Windows servers/any Operating system.
A static route will tell the Operating System to send network packets to the appropriate router instead of sending them to the default router. This simple guide shows how to add, delete and modify a static route to the routing table on Windows 11/10 and Microsoft Server Operating Systems.
There are a few useful commands you must know. Route delete, add and print. These commands will be handy to any user who has administrative access and know which router/gateway should be used for which network.
Why Add Static Route?
It mostly depends on the network setup. Usually, you can add these static routes on your default router (if it can support) or core switch. When you have this kind of proper network setup, you do not need to add a static route to each computer separately on the network. But in a few exceptional cases, you may need to implement static routes on individual computers. Here are a few examples.
- You have more than one internet router on the network and you need to send traffic to certain websites (based on their IP addresses) via a different router than the default gateway. Let’s say, for example, all traffic to Netflix can be sent via the 2nd internet router where other website traffic can go through the 1st internet router.
- There are several VLANs or subnets available on the network. Before building the proper routing table on the router or core switch, adding a static route on your Windows computer will help you to test the connectivity see the traffic flow.
- For network security or isolation purpose, certain routes can’t be added to the default gateway device. In this case, as a network administrator, you can add the static route on a local computer to make network communication.
Route Add on Windows 11/10 and Windows Servers
Though there are major changes and interface upgrades in the latest Windows 11, the below steps remain the same.
Make sure you run the below commands on command prompt (or PowerShell) which is opened as Administrator.
Here is the command to add a static route to the routing table.
route ADD destination_network MASK subnet_mask gateway_ip metric_cost
route add 10.10.10.0 mask 255.255.255.0 10.10.29.1
It indicates that any packets to 10.10.10.0 (in class C – 255.255.255.0) network should be forwarded to the 10.10.29.1 router (gateway).
Obviously, the PC/server in which we run this command is in the 10.10.29.0/24 network because it should communicate to the gateway from the same network.
The issue with the above command is when you shut down or restart the computer, these route entries will be removed. To make it permanent and add to the Windows OS routing table, we should use the –p key with the add command. So, adding a persistent (or permanent) static route on Windows 10 command will be like this;
route add –p 10.10.10.0 mask 255.255.255.0 10.10.29.1
Route Print
Route print command is another useful command to view the entries on the routing table and which routes are active at the moment. If you need to modify an entry that is already in the routing table, better to confirm the entries before changing. To do it, use the route print command.
Route print
Also, we can view the persistent routes in a Windows OS by checking the following registry path. Look for the entries in this area before or after modifying any routing table entries.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE->SYSTEM->CurrentControlSet-> Services->Tcpip->Parameters->PersistentRoutes
Route Delete on Windows 11/10 & Windows 2022/2019/2016 Servers
The below command is to delete an existing persistent route from a computer. Even though we added a route entry with the network, network mask and gateway, but to delete, we need to mention the network only. So, it goes like this;
route delete 10.10.10.0
That will delete the 10.10.10.0 route entry from the computer. You do not need to restart the computer to take effect. Adding and deleteting route entries take effect instantly.
Let’s say that after the recent network change, now the network 10.10.10.0 should be routed through the 10.10.29.200 gateway. Obviously, you have to modify the existing route for this network and change the gateway to 10.10.29.200.
So, how to modify the existing route entry? You can’t modify an existing entry.
The simple method is to delete it and add the new entry. So, in this case, you would perform the below commands.
Route delete 10.10.10.0 Route add –p 10.10.10.0 mask 255.255.255.0 10.10.29.200
We hope this simple guide is helpful in understanding the route add, delete and print commands in Windows 10/Windows 11 client PC and other server Operating Systems. Make sure you open the command prompt or PowerShell as Administrator to perform these commands. If you want to use cosmetic variables to identify the fast hops to reach a network, you can use the metric key as described at the Microsoft site here.
Have you ever connected to a VPN and realize that you cannot access some of the network resources that you have at home? Maybe you are not able to access Printer in your local network, or something else.
And other situation is you have a windows machine that is connected to two different networks and you Are not able to access some of the network resources and some of them are working fine.
Then you have a problem with your network routing, in this blog I am going to cover how you can solve those above issues by Reconfiguring the windows routing table.
What is routing?
If you are not familiar with routing then don’t worry, routing is a mechanism to connect two different network Segments to each other.
Suppose you have a network 192.168.1.0/24 and another 10.1.1.0/24. By default, both of those networks cannot talk to each other because both are two different subnets. For both the network to talk to each other, you need to use static routing.
There is something called dynamic routing, which is used by the network devices such as routers, firewall and layer3 switch and even some of the windows server machine.
In this blog, we are focusing on the end host level especially windows static routes.
What is static routing in windows?
A static route is a specific subnet route that is defined by the admins manually to reach a certain destination. You can specify the destination subnet that you want to reach from the host and point to a default gateway. You can add as many static routes as you like.
You can define for example, to reach 192.168.1.0/24 you can go via 10.1.1.1
The static route is usually not needed when you host has only a single interface, the default route will take care of that.
Read also,
Windows 11 on KVM – How to Install Step by Step?
How To Extend Windows Storage in KVM ?
KVM Windows No Sound? – Let’s fix it.
10 Easy Steps To Install Windows Server in Linux KVM
How To Set Static IP On Ubuntu? (GUI and CLI)
What is default route in windows?
If you don’t know the subnet that you want to reach, that’s when you use something called default routes. The default route is mainly configured to reach the internet.
We don’t know the IP addresses that are available on the internet, right?
That means you cannot specify the routes in the routing table, and on the internet, there are millions of IP addresses, and how do I reach those IP address from your local machine?
You can type 0.0.0.0 as the IP subnet and 0.0.0.0 as the mask and point the route to the default gateway. This basically tells the windows host that to reach any subnet apart from the specific subnet you use the default route.
Usually the default route is added to a window hosts or any end hosts for that matter is by configuring the default gateway. If you define a default gateway on the system, that would add a default route pointing to the default gateway.
However, In some situations, it can create a problem, because you may have multiple LAN ports and all are configured with DHCP, as soon as the host receive the IP address via DHCP on all ports, it also add default gateways for all those interfaces. The result is multiple default routes towards multiple gateways. This would create a problem when the end hosts wanted to reach the internet.
how to view the routing table in windows?
Like any network devices, the windows machine also has a local routing table. It can tell you lot of information about the routes that this windows box is aware of.
To view the windows routing table, you can enter the command route print in windows command line prompt. However, that you would display both the IPv4 and IPv6 routing table, and you can also get the route output specific to the IP version.
how do I see ipv4 routes in windows?
If you wanted to see just the IPv4 routes in windows you can type the command route print -4.
how do I see ipv6 routes in windows?
Just like the IPv4 you can also see the IPv6 routes alone in the windows routing table by typing route print -6.
How do you read a Windows routing table?
It’s quite common for anyone to look at the windows routing table and get confused with the information displayed. Let’s go through and explain each one of the items in the windows routing table.
- Interface ID – each interface that you have on your machine will be identified with a unique ID.
- The mac address of the machine – this is the physical address of your network interface card. You can also get the mac address detail by typing ipconfig /all.
- The name of the interface.
- IPv4 routing table – Here you can view the IPv4 routing table.
- Network destination – It shows the destination subnet that this machine can reach currently.
- Netmask – the subnet mask of the network destination IP.
- Gateway – you can see the remote gateway as well as on-link where you are learning this route from.
On-link means, the directly connected routes from its own NIC. - Interface is the place you can see the IP address of each network interface.
- The IP address 127.0.0.1 is the machine’s loopback interface.
- Metric – It is the value that defines the priority of the route, the lower the metric the better.
- Persistent route – This route is defined by the admins and it would never be removed even when you power down the system, read on to learn more about it.
- IPv6 routing table – You can view the IPv6 routing table here.
- IPv6 persistent routes – The same persistent routes available in the Ipv4.
How do I manage multiple gateway in windows?
When you have two interfaces installed on the windows machine, you will have to manage the multiple gateways using static routes. Lets look at how we can configure multiple gateways using the static routes. below are the examples that we are going to configure.
- Validate the internet connectivity.
- Configure primary default gateway for windows 10.
- How to delete the route in windows?
- How to add two default routes in windows?
- How do I add a static route in Windows?
- How do I add a persistent route in Windows?
Validate the internet connectivity.
Before we begin, lets validate the internet connectivity on this host.
Open CMD with admin rights.
Click on the start menu, and type CMD. Right-click and Run as administrator. Click yes on the admin prompt.
Or
- Windows key + R
- Type CMD
- Press CTRL+Shift+Enter
Note: To see the routing table, you don’t need to access the CMD with Admin rights, normal access would do.
Lets try to ping the internet IP, which is 8.8.8.8.
Yes, I can reach the internet and let me check which path it is taking by using a command called tracert
As you can see, it is taking the path 192.168.0.1.
If you look closely at the routing table, you can notice, there are two default routes with same metric. One towards 192.168.0.1 (interface 1)and the other towards 10.1.1.1 (Interface 2) with equal metric.
In this setup, for the first time when you try to access the internet, It will send the packet out to both the interfaces. And it elects the default gateway that it needs to use.
Configure primary default gateway for windows 10.
Since we don’t have access to internet via the interface 2 (10.1.1.1), we shouldn’t be using the default route towards it. To resolve multiple default gateways on your network, you got two options.
Change the metric for the windows interface or Delete the default gateway pointed to the interface 2.
We know that the interface which we wanted to use for the internet is interface 1 (192.168.0.1) and when we look at the metric, we can see that both the interface 1 and 2 has the same metric 281.
In normal windows machine you should be able to see the metric starting from 25, and if you are using windows as a VM you can notice its metric is by default 281. However, when you try to change the metric, you will be able to see windows machine by default would take the metric as 25 though you cannot see them.
To make the interface 1 as the priority one for the internet, you need to lower the metric of it.
All you have to do is, add the metric value of 1 for the interface 1., and that would change the windows metric value to 26 (25+1)
1.Get the interface ID.
When you enter the command route print -4, that will show you the interface list on the top.
And for our interface 1, the ID is 21, and interface 2 is it 25.
To validate the interface you can type ipconfig /all and compare the mac address with the interface list ID’s.
2. Change the interface metric.
3. Validate the configuration.
Lets check the routing table now.
As you can see, the metric changed to 26 for our main interface. From now on, all the internet traffic will go out via the interface 1.
What if the interface 1 goes out?, then by default windows machine will start using the interface2
To simulate the issue, I just unplugged the interface 1 and as you can see, I no longer have the default route towards the interface1.
How to delete the route in windows?
The above scenario will be useful, if you have internet access on both links where the interface 1 has more bandwidth than interface 2.
Since we don’t have internet access at all on interfac2, there is no point in keeping the default route so let’s go ahead plug the interface1 back in and remove the default route connected to the interface2.
- To delete a route in the windows routing table, you can use the command route DELETE.
As we are going to delete the default route pointed to 10.1.1.1, you can use the command below.
route DELETE 0.0.0.0 MASK 0.0.0.0 10.1.1.1
2. Verify the routing table.
We no longer have the default route pointed to 10.1.1.1 gateway.
How to add two default routes in windows?
In our previous scenario where everything was looking good, however when the internet on the interface 1 goes down there is no redundancy in place. So, you decided to add internet over secondary interface.
One of the use cases being, you have internet on interface 1 that has more bandwidth and internet 2 with less bandwidth, in the event of internet 1 goes down, the internet 2 on interface 2 should kick in.
In the routing table, we already have a default route in which we set the metric to 26 previously.
Let’s go ahead and add the second default route with more metric, that way the second default route will be less preferred over the primary link. And when the primary link goes down the secondary one will take care of the internet traffic.
To add the default route you can add the below commands.
route ADD 0.0.0.0 MASK 0.0.0.0 10.1.1.1 -p METRIC 50 -p
The reason I added the metric 50 because, if you add another default route without a metric it would just pick up the default metric that is already used by the other default route.
The newly added route now has the metric of 75 now.
When you have connected to wifi and wired at the same time on your windows 10 PC, you will have two default route with different metric and if you are thinking about prioritising the wifi network over wired, then you check out the article here to know how.
How do I add a static route in Windows?
Alright the internet part has been taken care with default route, now lets talk about the specific static routes towards the server from 1 to 6.
In the servers list, to reach server 1-3 you must go via the interface 2 and the server 3-7 should reach via interface 1.
Lets start with the server1, 10.2.2.10 by pinging.
As you can see, we are not able to reach the IP, lets look into the IP table, and I don’t see any IP inside the routing table which is not good.
Currently what’s happening is that, since we do not have a specific route towards 10.2.2.0 it is taking the default route with lower metric on the interface1.
As you can see from the traceroute below.
We need to point the 10.2.2.0 towards interface 2.
In CMD add the route as below.
route add 10.2.2.0 mask 255.255.255.0 10.1.1.1
Verify the route table again.
Ping the IP address, as you can see, we are able to reach the iP address via interface 2 now.
How do I add a persistent route in Windows?
We just added a static route in windows and it is working as expected, however what happens if you reboot the machine?
When you reboot the machine, whatever the changes that you made for the routing will be removed. For those routes that are temperoroly it should be fine, but not good for the permanent destination.
To avoid that you can use persistent route in windows. That way the changes that you make on the windows routing table are retained even after you reboot the machine. To add a persistent route, you just have to add -p at the end of the route statement.
route add 10.2.2.0 mask 255.255.255.0 10.1.1.1 -p
From now on all the routes that we are going to add using the persistent command only.
You should be able to see the persistent route on the bottom of the routing table.
Lets add rest of the other IP addresses, before we add the routes, lets verify the reachability.
No, both destinations are not reachable now, so lets go ahead and add the routes.
route add 192.168.6.10 mask 255.255.255.0 10.1.1.1 -p
route add 172.16.2.10 mask 255.255.255.0 10.1.1.1 -p
The servers over the interface2 can be reached now, you may test the connectivity using the ping again and it should work just fine.
You can also verify the added routes in the windows routing table.
Can we reach the servers 4-6 in interface1 now? As you know we don’t have specific routes for it. If you said the answer is Yes, then you are right!.
let’s send ping to server 4,5 and 6.
As you can see, I am able to reach all three servers just fine, how come we are able to reach those servers even though we don’t have a specific static route for the same.
Its because, it is using the same default route on the interface1, so the PC would send the route to the default gateway, and because the gateway knows about the connected route 10.0.0.0/24, 198.168.3.0/24 and 172.0.0.0/24 the windows PC can reach all the servers on the interface1.
This is working great, right?
Yes but no, let me explain.
It is working fine now, but what if you decided to remove the default route on the interface 1, then it will be a problem. Those servers 4-6 going via interface 1 over the default route cannot get to the remote anymore.
It is recommended to add specific static routes that we added for the interface 2 and it should take care of everything. So even if you decide to remove the internet on the interface 1, you can peacefully remove the default route and specific routes will take care of the server reachability.
To add the rest of the servers subnet into the routing, you may add the route statement as below.
route add 10.0.0.0 mask 255.255.255.0 192.168.0.1 -p
route add 172.0.0.0 mask 255.255.255.0 192.168.0.1 -p
route add 192.168.3.0 mask 255.255.255.0 192.168.0.1 -p
Validate the routes.
Есть два ПК: один в сети 192.168.1.0/24, другой в сети 192.168.2.0/24. Они не пингуют друг друга. Связаны сети через роутер с двумя IP: 192.168.1.253 и 192.168.2.254.
На компе с адресом 192.168.1.150 есть дополнительный маршрут по умолчанию с On-Link в качестве шлюза (метрика 20). Дополнительный потому что есть второй маршрут, где шлюзом указан роутер 192.168.1.253 (метрика 21).
Если маршрут с On-Link удалить, то компы пингуются. Но после перезагрузки он добавляется обратно. Как сделать так, чтобы этот маршрут не создавался автоматически? Или, может, его метрику увеличить, чтобы сначала выбирался другой маршрут по умолчанию. Только не вручную, а групповой политикой для всех компов в сети.
Справа как должно быть:
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Вопрос задан
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Раздел: Windows
Написано: 30.11.2012
Автор: Antonio
Бывает необходимо дать на время доступ к интернету пользователю или какой-нибудь программе, а потом закрыть. Можно это сделать, например, указав шлюз в настройках протокола TCP-IP, но для этого нужны права администратора да и это займет дольше времени, чем запустить скрипт под правами администратора (правая кнопка по ярлыку или скрипту удерживая клавишу Shift) с указанием нужного шлюза.
Для управления роутингом или для указания шлюза служит команда route
Решение:
Добавляем маршрут по-умолчанию (например, у нас IP шлюза 10.0.0.1)
route add 0.0.0.0 mask 0.0.0.0 10.0.0.1
удаляем маршрут по-умолчанию (default gateway Windows)
route delete 0.0.0.0 mask 0.0.0.0
Посмотреть таблицу маршрутизации и шлюз по-умолчанию (основной шлюз) можно командной
Static routes define fixed paths for network traffic that would otherwise have their path calculated automatically. This guide explains static routes, why you would use them, and provides step-by-step instructions showing how to add and remove static routes on Windows. It also looks at adding persistent routes and other tips for network management on Windows.
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What are static routes?
In computer networking, a “route” is the path network packets take to reach their destination. Data from your computer is broken into small packets for transfer over the local network (for example, between your computer and wireless printer), or for transmission over the internet (such as when you submit an online form). Network routing then takes care of making sure all of these packets reach their destination where they can be re-assembled into the original complete message.
Computer networks are designed in this way so that if there’s a disruption somewhere in the network, packets can be re-routed through a different connection. When there is no disruption, routing protocols can optimize for efficiency, sending data through different paths simultaneously to improve speed.
The key components in network routing are:
- Routing table: This is where each device (including your Windows PC) stores the information about the routes to different destinations.
- Next hop: Most network routes need to cover large distances over complex networks. The “next hop” is the next stop along the path to the destination (for example, there is a hop between your PC and a wireless printer — packets need to go first to your Wi-Fi router, then your printer).
- Routing protocols and metrics: Routing protocols are the software that is used by network devices to keep routing tables up-to-date with the latest paths data should take. This is done based on the number of hops, bandwidth, and/or latency.
Usually, routes are automatically calculated by the routing protocol and stored in a routing table based on routing metrics. These dynamic routes change based on network conditions. The default route can be set for all traffic with no route otherwise assigned in the routing table.
Static routes can be manually configured in a devices routing table, to set fixed paths traffic should take instead of dynamic routes or the default route. If this route is broken, traffic will not be able to reach the destination and a dynamic alternate route will not be calculated.
Why do you need to use static routes?
In some situations, the dynamic route is not the route you want specific traffic to take. You may want to take a known optimal route or send traffic along a secure connection. Example use-cases for static routes include:
- Sending traffic via a known reliable route that avoids faulty networking conditions that are outside your control or that fully utilizes a better connection for optimization.
- Building efficient networks using low-power devices that do not need to run routing protocols.
- Maintaining full control over the path network traffic takes for optimization or to ensure protected data only travels over your secure network infrastructure.
- Ensuring network traffic takes a predictable path for troubleshooting or easier management.
- Adding redundancy and resiliency to your networks by providing a known alternative path as a fallback to dynamic routes.
Static routes are frequently used to ensure certain traffic is sent over a VPN connection. This can be important when you handle sensitive data that you do not want routed over the internet. While static routes are usually not required for day-to-day tasks on home Windows PCs, there are situations where they are added for troubleshooting or to set up remote networks for work-from-home setups.
IP addresses and network masks
Route tables use the IPV4 or IPV6 IP address of the destination and hops to identify routes. You’ll need a basic understanding of IP addresses and network masks to write effective static routes.
How to use the route command for Windows
The route command is built-in to Windows and lets you view currently set static routes, as well as adding, removing, and editing them. The route command is available in all versions of Windows including Windows 11, Windows 10, and Windows Server. The route command can be run from either the Command Prompt or PowerShell, and needs to be run as an administrator.
To open PowerShell or the Command Prompt to use the route command, right-click on the Start menu, and then:
- Click Terminal (Admin) if you’re using Windows 11
- Click Command Prompt (Admin) if you’re using Windows 10
How to list static routes on Windows
To list the existing static routes, enter the following command:
route print
This will output the current route table, showing all the currently configured static routes. You can use this command to verify that you’ve successfully added, removed, or edited a static route.
How to add a static route on Windows
The below example route command adds a static route:
route add 0.0.0.0 mask 0.0.0.0 192.168.77.1
The command is constructed as follows:
- The route executable is called.
- The add command tells it to add a static route to the routing table.
- The first 0.0.0.0 is the destination network. In this case, 0.0.0.0 matches all networks.
- The second 0.0.0.0 specifies the subnet mask this static route should apply to, in this case again matching all subnets.
- 192.168.77.1 specifies the gateway address. This is the next hop through which all matching traffic will be sent.
This static route sends all network traffic to 192.168.77.1, effectively adding a default route.
The next example adds a route to a specific network:
route add 192.168.10.0 mask 255.255.255.0 192.168.77.1
The command differs from the previous example:
- 192.168.10.0 is the destination network.
- 255.255.255.0 specifies the subnet mask this static route should apply to, in this case matching all addresses in the 192.168.10.0 subnet.
- 192.168.77.1 specifies the gateway address. This is the next hop through which all matching traffic will be sent.
In effect, this static route sends traffic destined for the 192.168.10.0 network to 192.168.77.1.
How to remove a static route on Windows
To delete a static route, use the route delete command, and match the details with the static route you wish to delete.
route delete 0.0.0.0 mask 0.0.0.0 192.168.77.1
The above command deletes the static route created in the previous step.
How to remove all static routes on Windows
To delete all static routes on Windows, use the command:
route -f
Make a static route permanent/persistent on Windows
Static routes will be cleared from the route table on Windows when you reboot. To make a persistent route — one that is permanent and will survive a reboot — add the -p parameter to your route add command:
route -p add 0.0.0.0 mask 0.0.0.0 192.168.77.1
Troubleshooting and best practices for managing static routes
If you are manually managing static routes on Windows machines, you should document which routes are set on which machines to avoid a forgotten static route, causing a troubleshooting issue.
You should also regularly review which static routes are set (this can be done using the route print command in Windows), and remove ones that are no longer required. Network monitoring solutions will assist with identifying network changes and broken routes that may need to be addressed.
If you are working in an enterprise environment with multiple devices that all require the same static routes, you should implement them at the network level rather than per device.
Windows route management tools
In addition to the route command that is built into Windows, you can use the following tools to manage routes and perform other networking tasks on Windows:
- NetRouteView is a free routing utility for Windows that provides a graphical interface for viewing, adding, and modifying static routes.
- Angry IP Scanner and Advanced IP Scanner can help you find and identify devices on your local network, and manage static routes on connected Windows devices by executing remote commands or scripts.
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Managing large Windows networks efficiently
If you need to manage static routes on a fleet of Windows devices, either on a single network or in bring-your-own-device (BYOD) scenarios with traveling or remote employees, you shouldn’t rely on manually adding static routes and other network configurations to individual devices.
The NinjaOne remote management and monitoring platform (RMM) helps you secure, manage, and monitor Windows devices at scale, ensuring that they are all correctly configured. This allows you to deploy updated networking and security policies from a centralized interface, removing the time-consuming tasks of updating, cataloging, and enforcing static routes and other policies.