ip command vs route command, what's the difference?

Question

I see both ip and route commands used for configuring the kernel routing tables. What's the difference? It seems to me that the ip command is preferred more. Is it so, and why?

Answer 1

Using the ip command and iproute2 tools in general is the preferred way to do this now as the net-tools package is deprecated, the last release being 1.6.

Having said that it seems likely that net-tools will be around for a long time to come as it is so deeply entrenched in the sysadmin muscle memory.