6.11. Assigning a VPN connection to a dedicated routing table to prevent the connection from bypassing the tunnel

Procedure

1. Decide which routing table you want to use. The following steps use table 75. By default, RHEL does not use the tables 1-254, and you can use any of them.

2. Configure the VPN connection profile to place the VPN routes in a dedicated routing table:

   # nmcli connection modify <vpn_connection_profile> ipv4.route-table 75 ipv6.route-table 75

3. Set a low priority value for the table you used in the previous command:

   # nmcli connection modify <vpn_connection_profile> ipv4.routing-rules "priority 32345 from all table 75" ipv6.routing-rules "priority 32345 from all table 75"

   The priority value can be any value between 1 and 32766. The lower the value, the higher the priority.

4. Reconnect the VPN connection:

   # nmcli connection down <vpn_connection_profile>
   # nmcli connection up <vpn_connection_profile>

Verification

1. Display the IPv4 routes in table 75:

   # ip route show table 75
   ...
   192.0.2.0/24 via 192.0.2.254 dev vpn_device proto static metric 50
   default dev vpn_device proto static scope link metric 50

   The output confirms that both the route to the remote network and the default gateway are assigned to routing table 75 and, therefore, all traffic is routed through the tunnel. If you set ipv4.never-default true in the VPN connection profile, a default route is not created and, therefore, not visible in this output.

2. Display the IPv6 routes in table 75:

   # ip -6 route show table 75
   ...
   2001:db8:1::/64 dev vpn_device proto kernel metric 50 pref medium
   default dev vpn_device proto static metric 50 pref medium

   The output confirms that both the route to the remote network and the default gateway are assigned to routing table 75 and, therefore, all traffic is routed through the tunnel. If you set ipv6.never-default true in the VPN connection profile, a default route is not created and, therefore, not visible in this output.