The routing table that stores the routes is a metadata table that can be read through the sys.routes catalog view. This catalog view can only be updated through the CREATE ROUTE, ALTER ROUTE, and DROP ROUTE statements.
By default, the routing table in each user database contains one route. This route is named AutoCreatedLocal. The route specifies 'LOCAL' for the next_hop_address and matches any service name and broker instance identifier.
When a route specifies 'TRANSPORT' for the next_hop_address, the network address is determined based on the name of the service. SQL Server can successfully process service names that begin with a network address in a format that is valid for a next_hop_address.
The routing table can contain any number of routes that specify the same service, network address, and broker instance identifier. In this case, Service Broker chooses a route using a procedure designed to find the most exact match between the information specified in the conversation and the information in the routing table. For more information about how Service Broker chooses a route, see Service Broker Routing.
Service Broker does not remove expired routes from the routing table. An expired route can be made active using the ALTER ROUTE statement.
A route cannot be a temporary object. Route names that start with # are allowed, but are permanent objects.