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Most GNU/Linux distributions offer various software packages in their repositories which contain standard Unix networking tools for controlling the network subsystem of the Linux kernel; they serve the task of configuring network interfaces, routing tables, managing the ARP table, and so on. In Debian multiple such tools are combined into packages, e.g. net-tools, iproute2, vlan, bridge-utils, wireless-tools, iw and some more.
The utilities contained in the “net-tools”-suite are old and deprecated. The ones contained in the “iproute2”-suite communicate with the Linux kernel via the (rt)netlink interface, providing advanced features not available through the legacy “net-tools”- commands ifconfig and route. See e.g. iproute2 or net-tools VS iproute2) for a comparison.
In the OpenWrt software package repositories networking utilities are available as separate opkg-packages while core utilities like ifconfig, route, netstat and vconfig are also contained in busybox as applets: busybox-ifconfig, busybox-route, etc.
utility invocation Purpose
ip ip link network device configuration
ip addr protocol IPv4 or IPv6 address management on a device
ip addrlabel protocol address label management, label configuration for protocol address selection
ip l2tp establish static (aka unmanaged) L2TPv3 Ethernet tunnels.
For unmanaged tunnels, there is no L2TP control protocol so no userspace daemon is required - tunnels are manually created by issuing commands at a local system and at a remote peer.
L2TPv3 is suitable for Layer-2 tunneling. Static tunnels are useful to establish network links across IP networks when the tunnels are fixed. L2TPv3 tunnels can carry data of more than one session. Each session is identified by a session_id and its parent tunnel's tunnel_id. A tunnel must be created before a session can be created in the tunnel.
When creating an L2TP tunnel, the IP address of the remote peer is specified, which can be either an IPv4 or IPv6 address. The local IP address to be used to reach the peer must also be specified. This is the address on which the local system will listen for and accept received L2TP data packets from the peer.
L2TPv3 defines two packet encapsulation formats: UDP or IP. UDP encapsulation is most common. IP encapsulation uses a dedicated IP protocol value to carry L2TP data without the overhead of UDP. Use IP encapsulation only when there are no NAT devices or firewalls in the network path.
When an L2TPv3 Ethernet session is created, a virtual network interface is created for the session, which must then be configured and brought up, just like any other network interface. When data is passed through the interface, it is carried over the L2TP tunnel to the peer. By configuring the system's routing tables or adding the interface to a bridge, the L2TP interface is like a virtual wire (pseudowire) connected to the peer.
Establishing an unmanaged L2TPv3 Ethernet pseudowire involves manually creating L2TP contexts on the local system and at the peer. Parameters used at each site must correspond or no data will be passed. No consistency checks are possible since there is no control protocol used to establish unmanaged L2TP tunnels. Once the virtual network interface of a given L2TP session is configured and enabled, data can be transmitted, even if the peer isn't yet configured. If the peer isn't configured, the L2TP data packets will be discarded by the peer.
To establish an unmanaged L2TP tunnel, use
ip l2tp add tunnel and l2tp add session commands described in this document. Then configure and enable the tunnel's virtual network interface, as required.
Note that unmanaged tunnels carry only Ethernet frames. If you need to carry PPP traffic (L2TPv2) or your peer doesn't support unmanaged L2TPv3 tunnels, you will need an L2TP server which implements the L2TP control protocol. The L2TP control protocol allows dynamic L2TP tunnels and sessions to be established and provides for detecting and acting upon network failures.
See Documentation/networking/l2tp.txt
ip neigh neighbour/arp tables management, ARP or NDISC cache entry
ip netconf network configuration monitoring
utility can monitor IPv4 and IPv6 parameters (see /proc/sys/net/ipv[4|6]/conf/[all|DEV]/) like forwarding, rp_filter or mc_forwarding status.
ip netconf show
ip netns process network namespace management
A network namespace is logically another copy of the network stack, with its own routes, firewall rules, and network devices.
ip ntable neighbour table configuration
controls the parameters for the neighbour tables
ip route routing table management. Configuration files are:
/etc/iproute2/ematch_map
/etc/iproute2/group
/etc/iproute2/rt_dsfield
/etc/iproute2/rt_protos
/etc/iproute2/rt_realms
/etc/iproute2/rt_scopes
/etc/iproute2/rt_tables
ip rule routing policy database management
ip maddr multicast addresses management
ip mroute multicast routing cache management
ip tunnel tunnel over IP configuration
ip monitor state monitoring, see rtmon
ip xfrm setting xfrm, framework for IPsec protocol
ip tcp_metrics used to manipulate entries in the Linux kernel that keep TCP information for IPv4 and IPv6 destinations. The entries are created when TCP sockets want to share information for destinations and are stored in a cache keyed by the destination address. The saved information may include values for metrics (initially obtained from routes), recent TSVAL for TIME-WAIT recycling purposes, state for the Fast Open feature, etc. For performance reasons the cache can not grow above configured limit and the older entries are replaced with fresh information, sometimes reclaimed and used for new destinations. The kernel never removes entries, they can be flushed only with this tool.
Type ip tcp_metrics show to show cached entries
rtmon Listens to and monitors RTnetlink
nstat nstat and rtacct are simple tools to monitor kernel snmp counters and network interface statistics.
rtacct
routel Set of helper scripts you can use instead of ip-commands.
The routel script will list routes in a format that some might consider easier to interpret then the ip route list equivalent.
The routef script does not take any arguments and will simply flush the routing table down the drain. Beware! This means deleting all routes which will make your network unusable!
routef
ss utility to dump socket statistics. It allows showing information similar to the deprecated netstat. ss can display more TCP and state informations than other tools.
tc show / manipulate traffic control settings. tc is used to configure the Network packet scheduler of the Linux kernel
lnstat
ctstat
rtstat Unified Linux network statistics
A generalized and more feature-complete replacement for the old rtstat-utility. In addition to routing cache statistics, it supports any kind of statistics the Linux kernel exports via a file in /proc/net/stat/.
arpd userspace arp daemon
vconfig VLAN (IEEE 802.1q) configuration program. Allows you to create and remove VLAN−devices on a VLAN enabled Linux kernel. VLAN−devices are virtual Ethernet devices which represents the virtual lans on the physical lan
brctl Linux Ethernet bridge administration
bridge show / manipulate bridge addresses and devices; bridge uses facilities added in Linux 3.0. Although the forwarding table is maintained on a per-bridge device basis the bridge device is not part of the syntax. This is a limitation of the underlying netlink neighbour message protocol. When displaying the forwarding table, entries for all bridges are displayed. Add/delete/modify commands determine the underlying bridge device based on the bridge to which the corresponding ethernet device is attached.
wireless utilities
iw show / manipulate wireless devices and their configuration
iwinfo iwinfo is a CLI frontend to the library libinfo, which assembles information from various places
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