On Thu, 11 Mar 2004, James Ketrenos wrote:
>
> If this topic been hashed a lot already, please let me know the keywords I
> might
> search for in the archives to find the threads.
>
> I've had a few requests by users of the IPW2100 wireless driver to switch the
> default interface name to be wlanX vs. ethX. In my prior searches through
> the
> wireless drivers in the 2.6.3 kernel tree, I couldn't find any that changed
> from
> the default.
>
> I don't mind adding a module parameter to change the default name (if that is
> the standard practice), but thought I'd see what others thing rather than
> just
> going off and doing something random.
>
> Is there a technical or ease of use reason switching away from ethX? My
> thinking in keeping it eth was that it then represents a greater chance of
> "just
> working" with most networking scripts and utilities that may assume ethX is
> the
> interface name.
TBH I don't think it much matters. I know that at least Red Hat's networking
scripts
(and possibly other distributions) did at one point assume that each interface
would
be named ethX, but I don't think that is the case anymore.
Some drivers even present both a wlanX and an ethX interface, which I think is
an atavism
that goes back to networking scripts breaking horribly on non-ethX interface
names.
Going forward it might be worth while to standardize all wireless interface
names, just
to show at a glance that an interface is 802.11x, and also to differentiate the
fact that
eventually 802.11 will be its own network stack.
--
Matthew Galgoci
System Administrator
Red Hat, Inc
919.754.3700 x44155
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