Whats Difference and Comparing Network Configuration. Linux based distributions have featured set of commands which provide way to configure networking in easy and powerful way through command line. I did setup a virtual network interface in Centos 6 copying the ifcfgeth0 to ifcfgeth01 and changing the appropriate variables. But the connection was unstable. This is my first time I am trying to install Apache HTTP server locally in my box as a regular user nonroot. I have downloaded Apache 2. Apache HTTP. These set of commands are available from net tools package which has been there for a long time on almost all distributions, and includes commands like ifconfig, route, nameif, iwconfig, iptunnel, netstat, arp. Ifconfig Vs IP Command. These commands are just about sufficient in configuring the network in a way any novice or an expert Linux user would want, but due to advancement in Linux kernel over past years and unmaintainable of this packaged set of commands, they are getting deprecated and a more powerful alternative which has ability to replace all of these commands is emerging. This alternative has also been there for quite some time now and is much more powerful than any of these commands. Rest of sections would highlight this alternative and compare it with one of the command from net tools package i. Setup Arp Centos' title='Setup Arp Centos' />A Replacement for ifconfigifconfig has been there for a long time and is still used to configure, display and control network interfaces by many, but a new alternative now exists on Linux distributions which is much more powerful than it. This alternative is ip command from iproute. Although this command might seem a bit complex at first site but it is much broader in functionality than ifconfig. It is functionally organized on two layers of Networking Stack i. Layer 2 Link Layer, Layer 3 IP Layer and does the work of all the above mentioned commands from net tools package. While ifconfig mostly displays or modifies the interfaces of a system, this command is capable of doing following tasks Displaying or Modifying Interface properties. Adding, Removing ARP Cache entries along creating new Static ARP entry for a host. Displaying MAC addresses associated with all the interfaces. Displaying and modifying kernel routing tables. One of the main highlight which separates it from its ancient counterpart ifconfig is that latter uses ioctl for network configuration, which is a less appreciated way of interaction with kernel while former takes advantage of netlink socket mechanism for the same which is a much more flexible successor of ioctl for inter communication between kernel and user space using rtnetlink which adds networking environment manipulation capability. Install Sp3 On Windows Xp Embedded Torrent more. We can now begin to highlight the features of ifconfig and how they are effectively replaced by ip command. Commands. Following section highlights some of ifconfig commands and their replacement using ip commands 1. Displaying all Network Interfaces in Linux. Here, one distinguishing feature between ip and ifconfig is that whereas ifconfig only shows enabled interfaces, ip shows all the interfaces whether enabled or disabled. Command ifconfig. Check IP Addressip Command ip a. Check IP Address. Adding or Deleting an IP Address in Linux. The below command assigns the IP address 1. AddDel IP Address ifconfig eth. Syntax for addingremoving an interface using ifconfig command ifconfig eth. AddDel IP Address ip a add 1. Syntax for addingremoving an interface using ip command ip a add 1. Add MAC Hardware Address to Network Interface. The below command sets the hardware address for the interface eth. This can be verified by checking the HWaddr value in the output of ifconfig command. Add MAC Address. Here, the syntax for adding MAC address using ifconfig command ifconfig eth. Add MAC Address. Here, the syntax for adding MAC address using ip command ip link set dev eth. Setting Other Configurations of Network Interface. Apart from setting IP address or Hardware address, other configurations that can be applied to an interface include MTU Maximum Transfer UnitMulticast flag. Transmit Queue length. Promiscuous mode. Enable or disable all multicast modeifconfig Other Network Configurationsip Other Network Configurationsa. Set MTU value to 2. Enable or Disable multicast flag. Setting the transmit queue length. Enabling or disabling promiscuous mode. Enable or disable all multicast mode. Enabling or Disabling Network Interface. The below commands enable or disable specific network interface. DisableEnable Network Interface. The below command disables the interface eth. To re enable the interface, just replace down by up. DisableEnable Network Interface. The below ip command is alternative for ifconfig to disable a specific interface. This can be verified by the output of ip a command which shows all the interfaces by default, either up or down, but highlights their status along with the description. To re enable the interface, just replace down with up. Enable or disable the use of ARP protocol. The below commands enable or disable ARP protocol on specific network interface. EnableDisable ARP Protocol. The command enables ARP protocol to be used with interface eth. To disable this option, just replace arp with arp. EnableDisable ARP Protocol. This command is the ip alternative to enable ARP for the interface eth. To disable, just replace on with off. Conclusion. Thus, we have highlighted features of ifconfig command and how they can be done using ip command. Currently, Linux distributions provides a user with both the commands so that he can use according to his convenience. So, which command is convenient according to you which you would prefer to use Do mention this in your comments. If you want to learn more about these two commands, then you should go through our previous articles that shows some practical examples of ifconfig and ip command in more detailed fashion. Dont Miss 1. 5 ifconfig Examples to Configure Network Interface in Linux. Dont Miss 1. 0 ip Command Examples to Configure Network Interface in Linux.