For each interface you'll see the IP address as well as statistics on packets delivered and sent. Once you have the IP address you'll now want to make sure the machine can be found by other machines. To do this we check the routing table. If you are having trouble checking a connection to another host, check the IP routing table to see whether a default gateway is specified. Then check the gateway's routing table to ensure that paths to an outside network appear in that routing table.
Flags describe the characteristic of the route.
It is possible to have more than one characteristic, as in the default route. The route is a host. G The route is through a gateway. As this example shows, the local network uses the eth0 Ethernet interface, and the default gateway is also on that Ethernet interface. Also, our default gateway has status flags UG set, so we can conclude the route is active.