if_epair (4)
Leading comments
- Copyright (c) 2008 The FreeBSD Foundation All rights reserved. This software was developed by CK Software GmbH under sponsorship from the FreeBSD Foundation. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the a...
NAME
epair - A pair of virtual back-to-back connected Ethernet interfacesSYNOPSIS
To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following line in your kernel configuration file:device epair
Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the following line in loader.conf5:
if_epair_load="YES"
DESCRIPTION
The ifconfig is a pair of Ethernet-like software interfaces, which are connected back-to-back with a virtual cross-over cable.Each ifconfig interface pair is created at runtime using interface cloning. This is most easily done with the ifconfig(8) create command or using the cloned_interfaces variable in rc.conf5. While for cloning you only give either epair or epair<n> the ifconfig pair will be named like epair<n>[ab] This means the names of the first ifconfig interfaces will be epair0a and epair0b
Like any other Ethernet interface, an ifconfig needs to have a network address. Each ifconfig will be assigned a locally administered address by default, that is only guaranteed to be unique within one network stack. To change the default addresses one may use the SIOCSIFADDR ioctl(2) or ifconfig(8) utility.
The basic intend is to provide connectivity between two virtual network stack instances. When connected to a if_bridge4 one end of the interface pair can also be part of another (virtual) LAN. As with any other Ethernet interface one can configure vlan(4) support on top of it.