Two default gateways on CentOS

You have two or more network cards (interfaces) in one Linux system and each of these interfaces has its own default gateway. By default, you can only have one default gateway on a system.

We assume that we have two interfaces:
eth0
eth1

Two networks that should be used are:
192.168.1.0/24
10.10.0.0/24

whereby the first IP address in each respective network should be the gateway. Config files for these interfaces are in:
/etc/sysconfing/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
and
ifcfg-eth1
and it looks like this:
cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

TYPE=Ethernet
PROXY_METHOD=none
BROWSER_ONLY=no
BOOTPROTO=none
DEFROUTE=yes
IPV4_FAILURE_FATAL=no
IPV6INIT=no
IPV6_AUTOCONF="yes"
IPV6_DEFROUTE="yes"
IPV6_FAILURE_FATAL="no"
IPV6_ADDR_GEN_MODE="stable-privacy"
NAME=eth0
UUID=7f164bfd-1ae4-4062-aadd-e2ea8bc0121e
DEVICE=eth0
ONBOOT=yes
IPADDR=192.168.1.5
PREFIX=24
GATEWAY=192.168.1.1
DNS1=8.8.8.8
DNS2=1.1.1.1

cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1

TYPE=Ethernet
PROXY_METHOD=none
BROWSER_ONLY=no
BOOTPROTO=none
IPADDR=10.10.0.124
PREFIX=24
DNS1=8.8.8.8
DNS2=1.1.1.1
DEFROUTE=yes
IPV4_FAILURE_FATAL=no
IPV6INIT=no
NAME=eth1
UUID=9320b706-e68e-3610-9fec-9988316bd478
DEVICE=eth1
ONBOOT=yes
GATEWAY=10.10.0.1
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
NM_CONTROLLED=yes

To use a second interface and address we need to add another routing table. To do this go to file:
vim /etc/iproute2/rt_tables

and add at the end 1 rt2:

#
# reserved values
#
255     local
254     main
253     default
0       unspec
#
# local
#
#1      inr.ruhep
1 rt2

Now we need to add routing rules and routes:
ip route add default via 10.10.0.1 dev eth1 table rt2
ip rule add from 10.10.0.0/24 table rt2

You can check these changes with commands:
ip route show table rt2
ip rule show

If you would like to keep these changes after a system reboot it will be necessary to create systemd service. So, the first step is to create a script:
vim /usr/local/bin/default_routes.sh

# !/bin/bash
ip route add default via 10.70.70.2 dev eth1 table int

Don’t forget to change permissions to allow execute this file:
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/default_routes.sh

Now, we can create a systemd service. Create a file and add the necessary parameters:
vim /etc/systemd/system/default_route.service

[Unit]
Description=It adds default route for eth1
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/default_routes.sh
TimeoutStartSec=0

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

That’s all. Thank you.

Two default gateways on CentOS

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