A bitmap of status flags describing the state of this route's next hop, such as whether it is currently active, installed in the forwarding table (fib), recursively resolved, or not yet ready for use. Admins check these flags when a route appears in the routing table but traffic still is not forwarding correctly, since a next hop that is active but not fib means it has not actually been programmed into the forwarding path yet. A next hop showing the recursive bit set but not the fib bit would indicate the route depends on resolving another route first, and that resolution has not completed yet.