Network Interface Names

Each physical interface is identified by a unique device name. Device names have the following syntax:

<driver-name><instance-number>

Driver names on Oracle Solaris systems could include ce, hme, bge, e1000g and many other driver names. The variable instance-number can have a value from zero to n, depending on how many interfaces of that driver type are installed on the system.

For example, consider a 100BASE-TX Fast Ethernet interface, which is often used as the primary network interface on both host systems and server systems. Some typical driver names for this interface are eri, qfe, and hme. When used as the primary network interface, the Fast Ethernet interface has a device name such as eri0 or qfe0.

NICs such as eri and hme have only one interface. However, many brands of NICs have multiple interfaces. For example, the Quad Fast Ethernet (qfe) card has four interfaces, qfe0 through qfe3.