46 lines
2.0 KiB
HTML
46 lines
2.0 KiB
HTML
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
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<!--Converted with LaTeX2HTML 96.1-c (Feb 29, 1996) by Nikos Drakos (nikos@cbl.leeds.ac.uk), CBLU, University of Leeds -->
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<HTML>
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<HEAD>
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<TITLE>Networking Interfaces</TITLE>
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</HEAD>
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<BODY LANG="EN">
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<A HREF="node1.html"><IMG WIDTH=65 HEIGHT=24 ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="contents" SRC="contents_motif.gif"></A> <BR>
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<B> Next:</B> <A HREF="node25.html">IP Addresses</A>
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<B>Up:</B> <A HREF="node23.html">Issues of TCP/IP Networking</A>
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<B> Previous:</B> <A HREF="node23.html">Issues of TCP/IP Networking</A>
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<BR> <P>
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<H1><A NAME="SECTION004100000">Networking Interfaces</A></H1>
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To hide the diversity of equipment that may be used in a networking
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environment, TCP/IP defines an abstract <em>interface</em> through which
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the hardware is accessed. This interface offers a set of operations
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which is the same for all types of hardware and basically deals with
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sending and receiving packets.
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<P>
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For each peripheral device you want to use for networking, a
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corresponding interface has to be present in the kernel. For example,
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Ethernet interfaces in are called eth0 and eth1,
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and SLIP interfaces come as sl0, sl1, etc. These
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interface names are used for configuration purposes when you want to
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name a particular physical device to the kernel. They have no meaning
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beyond that.
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<P>
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To be usable for TCP/IP networking, an interface must be assigned an
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IP-address which serves as its identification when communicating with the
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rest of the world. This address is different from the interface name
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mentioned above; if you compare an interface to door, then the address
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is like the name-plate pinned on it.
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<P>
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Of course, there are other device parameters that may be set; one of
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these is the maximum size of datagrams that can be processed by that
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particular piece of hardware, also called <em>Maximum Transfer Unit</em>,
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or MTU. Other attributes will be introduced later.
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<P>
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<BR> <HR>
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<P><ADDRESS>
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<I>Andrew Anderson <BR>
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Thu Mar 7 23:22:06 EST 1996</I>
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</ADDRESS>
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</BODY>
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</HTML>
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