[FRED]

Hi,

What is the Cisco gateway of last resort and when do we need to use it?

Thanks in advance.

[Jay Whale]

Hi,

What is the Cisco gateway of last resort and when do we need to use it?

Thanks in advance.

@Fred

The default gateway of last resort is the route that a Cisco router will use when no other routes apply. You could almost think of this as a the 'default gateway' for a router. In order to configure the default gateway of last resort the following command is used

ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 192.168.1.1

The above assumes that the next hop IP address is 192.168.1.1.
The command above also doesn’t' specify a particular network, or a particular wildcardmask, but rather implies that to get to any network anywhere send the packet to the next hop (192.168.1.1 in this case). Remember that if there are any other routes in your routing table that are a closer match, they will be chosen before this route, so this really become the last resort option for the router, and hence the name, default gateway of last resort.