MTRP maintains separate state for direct neighbors, learned route candidates, and preferred forwarding choices.

A direct neighbor route is a destination that can be reached on a locally registered path without relaying through another node.

Direct neighbor routes are stored in the neighbor table.

A learned route is a route advertisement received from another node.

Learned routes are stored in the forwarding table as route candidates. Multiple candidates may exist for the same destination.

Example:

• destination A via next hop B
• destination A via next hop C
• destination A via next hop D

Preferred routes are not a copy of all learned routes.

A preferred route entry is created when MTRP actually selects a forwarding route for a destination during send-time resolution.

This means:

• the forwarding table represents what the node knows
• the preferred route table represents what the node has chosen to use

When sending a unicast frame, MTRP resolves the egress path in this order:

1. use an already-valid explicit egress path if present
2. try direct neighbor resolution
3. try forwarding-table resolution
4. mark unroutable if no valid path exists

A destination may appear many times in the forwarding table if multiple next-hop candidates are known.

This is normal behavior.