How does ifconfig determine which network interface to use as the default when DHCP assigns a default route for each NIC? It seems like it's in a race-condition and I need to have a more reliable solution. Is there a setting in /etc/network/interfaces that could define the preferred gateway? I read about "metric" but that did not seem to function. 10.04 LTS Server with two NICs on a managed network. IP addresses are assigned via DHCP which I do not manage. eth0 is assigned a private NAT address; eth1 is assigned a public IP.