Lab network basis > ex. 11 > add default route

Linux Basics Course
#1

  • Part 11:
    I don’t think that it’s clear what is meant with “Add the default route via eth0 gateway.”
    I don’t think there is enough context to solve this with the previous learning material.

  • From the hints, I see we are supposed to add 172.16.238.1 as a gateway.
    I don’t think this gateway IP can be found elsewhere, except in the hints.
    (in other words, it seems unsolvable).

Also, I know it’s conventional to use .1 for gateways, but some people use .254, and if you subnet the less common ways, e.g. for less than 254 hosts, it will be other addresses as well. (Meaning, we shouldn’t assume .1 is the gatway our way to the gateway address).

Or am I overlooking something?

#2

In Q10, you brought up eth0

If you do ip a to view the interfaces, e.g. to validate that eth0 is now present, you can see it has an IP address on the 172.16.238 network.

In Q3, you already determined what the default gateway for that network is, so this is why you use that IP.