Plumbing and Unplumbing Individual ATM Interfaces

The atmifconfig utility allows interfaces to be added, modified, or removed without rebooting the system by setting up and tearing down the streams necessary to use an ATM device. This setting up and tearing down of streams is referred to as plumbing and unplumbing.

The two required parameters for the utility are an interface name and plumbing instructions. If an interface is being set up for native ATM applications (no TCP/IP) or for Classical IP, the interface name should have the format baN, where N is the instance number. For LAN Emulation instances, the interface should have the format laneN, where N is the LAN Emulation instance number.

The second required parameter is the plumbing instruction. There are four possible values: plumb, unplumb, plumb-all, and unplumb-all. The plumb and unplumb options will set up or tear down the specified interface. The plumb-all and unplumb-all options will set up or tear down all ATM instances on the specified physical interface. In this case, the interface parameter must be a baN value, since this specifies the physical interface name. This will set up or tear down all the ATM instances on this physical interface, including up to 16 LAN Emulation instances and the Classical IP instance.

A summary of the parameter options for the atmifconfig utility is provided in Table 4-1.

The following example shows the use of atmifconfig and the output of ifconfig -a before and after the utility is run.

# ifconfig -a
lo0: flags=849<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 8232
        inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000 
ba0: flags=863<UP,BROADCAST,NOTRAILERS,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 9180
        inet 129.144.234.12 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 129.144.234.255
        ether 8:0:20:84:e5:31 
lane0: flags=863<UP,BROADCAST,NOTRAILERS,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
        inet 129.144.161.12 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 129.144.161.255
        ether 8:0:20:84:e5:31 
# atmifconfig ba0 unplumb
# ifconfig -a
lo0: flags=849<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 8232
        inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000 
lane0: flags=863<UP,BROADCAST,NOTRAILERS,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
        inet 129.144.161.12 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 129.144.161.255
        ether 8:0:20:84:e5:31 
# atmifconfig lane0 unplumb
NOTICE: lane0: leaving ELAN
# ifconfig -a
lo0: flags=849<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 8232
        inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000 
# atmifconfig ba0 plumb-all
q93b on ba0: Data Link Up
Configuring ATM interfaces: ba0
Configuring ATM LAN Emulation interfaces: lane0