The command route the "Use" field is only zeroed, it does not count the route searches chosen

Question

The route command output shows me the "Use" field but it always goes to zero, would not it be the route lookups because it does not count would it have something to activate so that it starts counting?

Answer 1

First: the route command is obsolete (as well as ifconfig etc.). You should really switch to using the iproute2 tools. Here that would be using ip route

That said, from the route man page:

   Use    Count of lookups for the route.  Depending on the use of -F
          and -C this will be either route cache misses (-F) or hits
          (-C).

On Linux, starting from kernel 3.6, after cost/benefit studies the IPv4 route cache has been removed. So this entry won't ever show anything on a recent kernel.

A recent enough ip route man page will tell it too:

NOTES
Starting with Linux kernel version 3.6, there is no routing cache for IPv4 anymore. Hence ip route show cached will never print any entries on systems with this or newer kernel versions.

This blog has more informations on the inner workings of the IPv4 Linux route and how it's performing well (even without cache).