How to Remove Unwanted route to 169.254.0.0 in RHEL Linux

Every time the system boots, You may have seen the following with the route to 169.254.0.0.

# route
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
10.10.2.0      *               255.255.255.0   U     0      0        0 bond0
10.10.2.0      *               255.255.255.0   U     0      0        0 eth3
169.254.0.0     *               255.255.0.0     U     0      0        0 eth3
default         10.10.2.254    0.0.0.0         UG    0      0        0 bond0

This is the zeroconf route (169.254.0.0). You manually disable it by turning off the firewall and remove the route with 169.254.0.0 / 255.255.0.0 using the route command.

Permanent Solution:

To disable the zeroconf route during system boot, edit the /etc/sysconfig/network file and add the following NOZEROCONF value to the end of the file:

NETWORKING=YES
HOSTNAME=localhost.localdomain
NOZEROCONF=yes

Layman Explanation:

Zeroconf, or Zero Configuration Networking, is a set of techniques that automatically create a usable IP network without configuration or special servers.

This allows inexpert users to connect computers, networked printers, and other network devices and expect a functioning network to be established automatically. Without Zeroconf, a user must either set up special services, like DHCP and DNS, or set up each computer's network settings manually, which may be challenging for non-technical or novice users.

Additional Information: wiki more about zeroconf