Administrators create IP interfaces on top of datalinks. Each datalink represents a link object in the second layer of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model. Datalinks can represent many different L2 entities such as physical network devices (termed physical links), aggregations of physical datalinks, virtual network interface cards (VNICs), etc.
Link names are either assigned when the associated link object is automatically created, or you can explicitly assign link names when you create the datalinks. Physical links (those that are associated with physical network devices) are created automatically when devices are added or when an Oracle Solaris system first boots after an installation. In this Oracle Solaris release, the naming of physical datalinks is no longer tied to the underlying hardware that is associated with the network device. By default, datalinks are assigned names that are prefixed by net and suffixed by a number that reflects the physical location of the datalink in the system. For example, the first onboard network device e1000g0 would be assigned the name net0, while the next e1000g1 device would be assigned the name net1, and so on. You can assign arbitrary names to datalinks that you explicitly create, for example, link aggregations. Also, you can explicitly rename the default-assigned netN name of a datalink, if desired.
Generic or flexible link names provide the following advantages for network configuration:
Within a single system, dynamic reconfiguration (DR) becomes easier. The network configuration for a given NIC can be inherited by a different NIC replacement.
The network setup for zones migration becomes less complicated. The zone in the migrated system preserves its network configuration if the destination system's link shares the same name with the link that is assigned to the zone prior to migration. Thus, no additional network configuration for the zone is required after the migration.
The generic naming convention makes network configuration that is specified in the System Configuration (SC) manifest used during an installation less complicated. Because the primary network datalink is generically named net0 for all systems, you can use a generic SC manifest for multiple systems that specify a configuration for net0.
Datalink administration also becomes flexible. You can further customize the names of datalinks, for example, to reflect a specific function that the datalink serves.
The following table illustrates the new correspondence between the hardware (NIC), the device instance, the link name, and the interface over the link. The names of the datalinks are automatically provided by the OS.
|
As indicated in this table, while the device instance name remains hardware-based, the datalinks are renamed by the OS after the installation.
To display the mapping between datalinks, their generic names, and the corresponding device instances, use the dladm show-phys command as follows:
# dladm show-phys LINK MEDIA STATE SPEED DUPLEX DEVICE net2 Ethernet up 1000 full bge2 net0 Ethernet up 1000 full e1000g0 net3 Ethernet up 1000 full nge3 net1 Ethernet up 1000 full e1000g1