Why doesn't Linux remove route from routing table if interface is physically down?

Question

As seen below, Linux(3.7-trunk-686-pae) keeps route to 10.10.12.64/28 in routing table although the interface is physically down:

root@kali:~# ip addr show dev eth0
2: eth0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state DOWN qlen 1000
    link/ether b4:99:ba:57:7c:5f brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 10.10.12.77/28 scope global eth0
root@kali:~# ip route show dev eth0
10.10.12.64/28  proto kernel  scope link  src 10.10.12.77 
root@kali:~# ip route get 10.10.12.69
10.10.12.69 dev eth0  src 10.10.12.77 
    cache 
root@kali:~# 

Route is removed from the routing table if I disable the interface administratively("ip link set dev eth0 down").

What is the purpose to keep the route in routing table while the interface itself is physically down? For example if the more-specific route 10.10.12.64/28 would not be present while the interface is down, then the traffic could be sent to less-specific route(for example 0.0.0.0/0) to another interface which is up.

Answer 1

There is no guarantee that another interface will route the traffic appropriately. Even if it does route to a device at the specified address, the device may not be the intended device. There are a number of issues which could arise:

Changing the routing to another interface may inflict NAT rules on the traffic, which would break connections when the interface comes up.

For private IP address ranges such as specified in the question, the interface may connect to another organization with an entirely different network. The local 10.0.0.0/8 network would be an inappropriate place to route such traffic. Even in the same organization, the block may be a test network replicating a production network.

For addresses which can be routed over the Internet, there may be security reasons not to route traffic over the Internet. Although it is not recommended, it is possible to use local routing to route traffic which should be kept secure. While it would be best to encrypt the traffic, in some cases this may be difficult to do.

Answer 2

My best suggestion would be to use netplug - http://www.red-bean.com/~bos/

Just use this to run

 ip link set eth0 down

when the cable is unplugged. And the reverse when it comes back up.

This is fine for a machine which is purely a router. But if the machine has other services, then these services would have to be bound to internal IP addresses.