Consistent Network Device Naming is a convention for naming Ethernet adapters in

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. It was created around 2009 to replace the old naming scheme that caused problems on

multihomed Multihoming is the practice of connecting a host or a computer network to more than one network. This can be done in order to increase reliability or performance. A typical host or end-user network is connected to just one network. Connecting to ...

machines because the network interface controllers (NICs) would be named based on the order in which they were found by the kernel as it booted. Removing existing or adding new interfaces could cause the previously added ones to change names. An Engineering Change Request was submitted to the PCI SIG firmware group on how system firmware can provide device naming to operating systems via the ACPI interface. __TOC__

Adoption

The convention was implemented for

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in a module called . Among the first major

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s to adopt the module were Fedora 15 in May 2011 and

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version 6.1. It was also released in

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11 Service Pack 2 in February 2012. The newer

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and

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models support the new names. An

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implementation is available, based on the udev mechanism. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 started using systemd for networking.

Device naming rules

* Onboard interfaces at firmware index numbers * Interfaces at PCI Express hotplug slot numbers * Adapters in the specified PCI slot, with slot index number on the adapter * If firmware information is invalid or rules are disabled, use traditional RHCSA & RHCE Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7: Training and Exam Preparation Guide (EX200 and EX300), Third Edition Paperback – 27 Mar 2015 by Asghar Ghori

References

{{Reflist, 40em Ethernet Linux drivers