Solved Network interface naming

J

jenaniston

only using RoFreeSBIE as a live version of FreeBSD (a 6.3 PRERELEASE) for now . . .
http://www.rofreesbie.org/

But a simply question for experts -
Code: 
netstat -i

bge0  1500  <Link#1>    (MAC address)
...
lo0  16384  <Link#4>
...



the bge0 must be some sort of equivalent to the eth0 interface ?
as I am familiar with in Linux Fedora versions of netstat and other terminal commands -
I notice the lo0 loopback interface is listed the same . . .

Any reasons ? Is there some technical differences in something between the bge0 of UNIX and the eth0 of Linux ?

Thank you very much.
 
jenaniston said:
Any reasons ? Is there some technical differences in something between the bge0 of UNIX and the eth0 of Linux ?
Click to expand...
Probably not. On FreeBSD (and I know on Solaris too) the driver dictates the name of the interface. So bge means it's using the broadcom drivers; bge(4).

NB. Please open your own thread as this has nothing to do with the issues in this thread.
 
FreeBSD names interfaces after the driver that is used for the NIC.

Thus, if you have an Intel 10/100 NIC, a 3Com 10/100 NIC, and a Broadcom 10/100/1000 NIC in your system, you would see: fxp0, xl0, and bge0. Makes it nice and simple to figure out which interface belongs to which physical NIC port.

On a Linux system, you would see eth0, eth1, and eth2. But, what do those correspond to? Takes a bunch of detective work to figure out.

However, FreeBSD support interface renaming, so if you really want to see eth0, you can do so. See the ifconfig(8) and rc.conf(5) man pages for details.
 
Ah . . . the driver that is used for the NIC

phoenix said:
FreeBSD names interfaces after the driver that is used for the NIC. ...
Click to expand...

Yes, that is the more powerful option and improvement using FreeBSD as a network administration tool.

Our university engineering library is now back open after being closed for all of the last week -
textbooks for FreeBSD I've checked out are gonna be more valuable than only google searching for every bit of info.

from source FreeBSD Unleashed pg 620 - bge0 Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet

Thanks everybuddy for the help in my getting FreeBSD started.
 
Going to man.freebsd.org and typing in the letters in front of the number, will bring up the man page for that NIC driver, which will show what hardware it supports, what options it has, etc.
 
phoenix said:
FreeBSD names interfaces after the driver that is used for the NIC.

Thus, if you have an Intel 10/100 NIC, a 3Com 10/100 NIC, and a Broadcom 10/100/1000 NIC in your system, you would see: fxp0, xl0, and bge0. Makes it nice and simple to figure out which interface belongs to which physical NIC port.

On a Linux system, you would see eth0, eth1, and eth2. But, what do those correspond to? Takes a bunch of detective work to figure out.

However, FreeBSD support interface renaming, so if you really want to see eth0, you can do so. See the ifconfig(8) and rc.conf(5) man pages for details.
Click to expand...

This makes sense, it is far more easier to recognize each device!
Let think the problem in a different way. Suppose that have 3 NICs from the same vendor, in that case linux has the advance of udev rules.

I have 20 NICs to my laptop (eth-to-USB connectors) using 2 10-port hubs (preparing for cisco lab), the debian gives me the ability to bind a name to each NIC using MAC addresses as attributes. So every time I know what device is the net0, net1 etc. Can I do the same with the FreeBSD? To put it in another format "is there any way to know that device deterministically take the same names accros the reboots"?

The purpose is not to blame BSDs (I m not a fanboy) but to find out if it is possible a migration (more choices are always welcome).

Thanks!
 
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