Automatic configuration of network interfaces
When a new network adapter is physically installed in the system, the operating system automatically adds the appropriate network interface for that adapter.
For example, if you install a token-ring adapter in your system,
the operating system assigns it the name tok0
and
add a token-ring network interface named tr0
. If
you install an Ethernet adapter in your system, the operating system
assigns it the name ent0
and add both an Ethernet
Version 2 and an IEEE 802.3 interface, named en0
and et0
respectively.
In most cases, there is a one-to-one correspondence between adapter
names and network interface names. For example, token-ring adapter
tok0
corresponds to interface tr0
,
adapter tok1 corresponds to interface tr1
, and so
on. Similarly, Ethernet adapter ent0
corresponds
to interface en0
(for Ethernet Version 2) and et0
(for
IEEE 802.3), and adapter ent1
corresponds to interface
en1
(for Ethernet Version 2) and et1
(for
IEEE 802.3).