Please No 169.254/16

When you bring up at new LINUX OS installation it will typically [at least in the case of CentOS] have a route of 169.254/16 on every interface. These routes are used to support the good and virtuous feature known as "zeroconf". Sometimes however you do not want that route noise - especially if the host is going to be operating as a router or firewall. Fortunately disabling this feature for this specific use-case is easy.

$ netstat -rn
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway    Genmask      Flags  MSS Window irtt Iface
169.254.0.0     0.0.0.0    255.255.0.0  U        0 0         0 eth0

Text 1: The 169.254/16 route for zeroconf in the routing table.

Edit the /etc/sysconfig/network file and add a line reading "NOZEROCONF=yes". Then either restart the networking stack or reboot the host. No more zeroconf routes.