On Fri, 2 Jun 2006, UNIX admin wrote:
Currently, the names of network interfaces are tied
to the
underlying hardware, for example, bge0.
This is so because of historical reasons, i.e. SunOS/BSD naming conventions,
which rely on networking HW having its own name.
One of the rare things I like is how Linux solved this: regardless of the networking HW,
all interfaces are named "eth[0-N]", for example eth0, eth1, ... , ethN.
Perhaps this would be a solution to consider? There can still be bge0, and
iprb0, iprb1 or ce0 in the system, but they would also have aliases net0, net1,
net2, net3 and so on.
The problem with the Linux "solution" is that it breaks network/card
configuration assignments for network interface cards not soldered to
your motherboard. Which card in which slot/hotplug bay is eth0 ? What
happens if a kernel update provides a network driver for the shiny 1TBps
lightspeed onboard interface that wasn't supported before, so I added a
network card that is, used to be eth0, and now the new driver makes my
onboard card eth0 ?
I also like the fact that for my laptop when running Linux, I don't have
to remember how the network driver is called. But the above problem, how
is it addressed on Linux ? On Solaris at least, that issue only occurs if
you have multiple cards of the same type... which isn't perfect either,
but in that scenario still better than linux.
FrankH.
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