Enable/Disable IP Forwarding in Solaris 10 without reboot

IP packet forwarding is the process of routing packets between network interfaces on one system. A packet arriving on one network interface and addressed to a host on a different network is forwarded to the appropriate interface.

In Solaris 10, IP Forwarding can be enabled or disabled using the routeadm & ifconfig commands as against the ndd commands in Solaris 9 and earlier. The advantage is the change dynamic and real-time and the change persist across reboot unlike the ndd command.

Enable/Disable IP Forwarding globally

To globally enable IP Forwarding in Solaris 10 use the routeadm command as follows:

In IPv4

solaris10# routeadm -e ipv4-forwarding

In IPv6

solaris10# routeadm -e ipv6-forwarding

The switches “-e” enables IP Forwarding.

To disable IP Forwarding

In IPv4

solaris10# routeadm -d ipv4-forwarding

In IPv6

solaris10# routeadm -d ipv6-forwarding

The switches “-d” enables IP Forwarding.

After the change run the following command for the changes to take effect.

solaris10# routeadm -u

Enable/Disable IP Forwarding per interface

To enable IP Forwarding on a specific interface (say bge0) using the ifconfig command

In IPv4

solaris10# ifconfig bge0 router

In IPv6

solaris10# ifconfig bge0 inet6 router

To disable IP Forwarding for an interface (say bge0)

In IPv4

solaris10# ifconfig bge0 -router

In IPv6

solaris10# ifconfig bge0 inet6 -router