- published: 18 Jun 2013
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ifconfig (short for interface configuration) is a system administration utility in Unix-like operating systems to configure, control, and query TCP/IP network interface parameters from a command line interface (CLI) or in system configuration scripts. Ifconfig originally appeared in 4.2BSD as part of the BSD TCP/IP suite.
Common uses for ifconfig include setting an interface's IP address and netmask, and disabling or enabling a given interface. At boot time, many UNIX-like operating systems initialize their network interfaces with shell-scripts that call ifconfig. As an interactive tool, system administrators routinely use the utility to display and analyze network interface parameters. The following example output samples display the state of a single active interface each on a Linux-based host (interface eth0) and the ural0 interface on an OpenBSD installation.
The free Berkeley Software Distribution UNIX operating systems (e.g., NetBSD, OpenBSD, and FreeBSD) continue active development of ifconfig and extension of its functionality to cover the configuration of wireless networking interfaces, VLAN trunking, controlling hardware features such as TSO or hardware checksumming or setting up bridge and tunnel interfaces. Solaris has historically used ifconfig for all network interface configuration, but as of Solaris 10 introduced dladm to perform data-link (OSI model layer 2) configuration, reducing ifconfig's purview to IP configuration.