Ubuntu will change the network interface name

Joaquín García

1 Comment

Network interface

During the past week the Ubuntu Online Summit took place where various objectives to be met in the next Ubuntu versions were discussed. We have already met one, how it is using GCC 5. Other decisions are still being discussed, although the fact of the discussion already represents a step forward. A) Yes one of the topics of discussion is the renaming of the network interface.

Currently when the system refers to network devices, names such as Eth0, Eth1, Wlan0, Wlan1, etc ... The idea is to change this standard in such a way that other names or another system is used to rename the interface of net.

At the moment three methods have been proposed to change the naming system of the network interface

The idea has been launched by Martin Pitt through the mailing list development and so far only three acceptable proposals have been submitted. One of these proposals is to be based on the MAC address of the device, this is the one that is currently used and has been used for a long time. The other alternative is to use the network interface names that the Bios uses, so it would be a copy or link of the bios names. The third method would be based on a hybrid system, a system known as Ifname that is based on software that generates random names based on the firmware or BIOS of the system, in case of failure, the system would use the MAC address.

These are the proposed methods, methods that have been tried and that are the most reliable but the Community has not yet been pronounced, so possibly the name of the network interface is something long in time that we will not see for a long time or at least until the IoT boom, a rethinking of device addresses will be necessary, just as we had the problem of IPv4 a short time ago.

Personally, I would choose the third method, however the technical details are not well developed so I am not aware of the technical problems. We will keep you posted on the matter because a change at this point will be important for many Ubuntu software, scripts and ways of working.


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  1.   viddeveloper said
    ago 9 years

    I believe that Ubuntu is making many decisions that, although it may be made by an example Distro for newcomers to Linux, it goes very far to the paths that others travel.

    They will do it with Snappy Core, and they have done it with their Unity, which in the end, it was only a matter of time for users to get used to it.

    Reply to vicdeveloper