Name

ip — stdin  stdout  - file  -- opt  --help  --version

Synopsis

ip [options] object command...

The ip command displays and sets various aspects of your computer’s network interface. This topic is beyond the scope of the book, but we’ll teach you a few tricks.

You can get information about the default network interface (usually called eth0):

$ ip addr show eth0
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 ...
  link/ether 00:50:ba:48:4f:ba brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
  inet 192.168.0.21/24 brd 192.168.0.255 scope global eth0
  inet6 fe80::21e:8cff:fe53:41e4/64 scope link 
    valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

This includes your MAC address (00:50:ba:48:4f:ba), your IP address (192.168.0.21), and various other information. To view all loaded network interfaces, run:

$ ip addr show

Some other useful commands for displaying network information include:

ip help

See usage information for all these commands

ip addr

Display IP addresses of your network devices

ip maddr

Display multicast addresses of your network devices

ip link

Display attributes of your network devices

ip route

Display your routing table

ip monitor

Begin monitoring your network devices; type ^C to stop

Each of these commands has various options: add help on the end (e.g., ip link help) for usage. Additionally, ip can modify your network: configuring your network devices, managing routing tables and rules, creating tunnels, and more. It’s part of a suite of tools called iproute2. You’ll need networking experience to understand this ...

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