Most of this is based off of standard routing rules.
So if an interface is the default route, and there is no defined interface on that subnet, it will go out the default interface.
i.e. You have three subnets 10.1.1.x(filer ip is 10.1.1.100) 185.15.1.x(filer ip is 185.15.1.100) and 202.134.1.x
If the filer has 10.1.1.x as the default, and 185.15.1.x is directly trunked to the filer, but 202.134.1.x is not, traffic for 185.15.1.x will go out the interface defined as 185.15.1.100(unless the host contacts it over the default interface.) Filers will reply on the interface they are contacted on, so routing is very important.
Now suppose you want hosts on 202.134.1.x to have access, they will go over 10.1.1.100, because there is no 202.134.1.x interface. If for some reason you wanted to contact 202.134.1.x over 185.15.1.100, you would have to tell the filer what router on the 185 network can access 202. Without a router, the traffic will not be able to get off of the 185 network and the filer knows that it can only directly access 185, so you have to specifiy what provides the next "hop".
I think you can specify an interface instead of the router on some boxes, but to my knowledge it is not a good thing as it leads to other issues.
It is possible on the filer, but USE BELOW AT YOUR OWN RISK, it may not be supported:
Filername: filerA
VIF name: VIF0
VLAN: 400
IP address of interface on filer: 192.168.1.100
make sure the interface is defined in /etc/hosts with a vaild name for that interface filerA-vif0-400 assuming filername-vif_name-vlan_number
if the filer resolves this to your ip address - route add net(or host if only one system) xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx filerA-vif0-400 1
You can also just use the ip address of the VIF in question - route add net xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 192.168.1.100 1
- Scott