What happens when you start-up gated for the 1st time GateD is a user process running as a application on a unix system. Due to the fact that the active routes may have change in the previous step, policy is re-run.
Policy is expressed in the export clauses which pertain to each protocol.
Smaller segements of work are run as foreground and backbround jobs Foreground jobs are run once. Foreground jobs are bits of work scheduled by protocols to be done as time permits. This scheduling of later work helps load balance the GateD processing. Each task must know about this balance and not take too much of the processing time. Background jobs are run repeatedly.