Enabling Packet Forwarding Globally

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When you enable forwarding on an IP interface by using the ipadm set-ifprop command, it is only enabled for that interface and forwarding on all of the other interfaces remains unchanged. Setting packet forwarding on an individual IP interface property enables you to implement this feature selectively on specific interfaces on the system. For more information, see Enabling Packet Forwarding in Configuring and Administering Network Components in Oracle Solaris 11.2 .

To enable packet forwarding on an entire system, regardless of the number of IP interfaces, use the protocol property. The forwarding property is the global IP property that is used to manage forwarding, which is the same property name that is used to manage forwarding on individual IP interfaces. Because you can enable forwarding for either IPv4 or IPv6 protocols (or both), you must manage each protocol individually.

For example, you would enable packet forwarding for all IPv4 and IPv6 traffic on the system as follows:

# ipadm show-prop -p forwarding ip
PROTO   PROPERTY     PERM   CURRENT   PERSISTENT   DEFAULT   POSSIBLE
ipv4    forwarding   rw     off       --           off       on,off
ipv6    forwarding   rw     off       --           off       on,off

# ipadm set-prop -p forwarding=on ipv4
# ipadm set-prop -p forwarding=on ipv6

# ipadm show-prop -p forwarding ip
PROTO   PROPERTY     PERM   CURRENT   PERSISTENT   DEFAULT   POSSIBLE
ipv4    forwarding   rw     on        on           off       on,off
ipv6    forwarding   rw     on        on           off       on,off

Note - The forwarding property of either IP interfaces or protocols is not exclusive. You can set the property for the interface and the protocol at the same time. For example, you could enable packet forwarding globally on the protocol, and then customize packet forwarding for each IP interface on the system. Thus, although enabled globally, you can still manage packet forwarding selectively on a per-interface basis.