In addition to performing basic datalink configuration, you can also use the dladm command to set datalink properties and customize them according to the requirements of your network.
The following three dladm subcommands are used to administer datalink properties:
Displays the properties of a datalink and its current values. If you do not use the –p property option, then all of the properties of the datalink are displayed. If you do not specify a datalink, then all of the properties of all of the datalinks are displayed.
Assigns a value to a datalink's property.
Resets a specific property of a datalink to its default value.
Datalink properties that you can customize depend on the properties a specific NIC driver supports.
Datalink properties that are configurable by using the dladm command fall into one of two categories:
Public properties – These properties can be applied to any driver of the given media type such as link speed, auto-negotiation for Ethernet, or the maximum transmission unit (MTU) size that can be applied to all datalink drivers.
Private properties – These properties are particular to a certain subset of NIC drivers for a given media type. These properties can be specific to that subset because they are closely related either to the hardware that is associated with the driver or to the details of the driver implementation itself, such as debugging-related tunables.
Link properties typically have default values. However, certain networking scenarios might require that you to change specific property values. For example, a NIC might be communicating with an old switch that does not properly perform auto-negotiation. Or, a switch might have been configured to support Jumbo frames. Or, driver specific properties that regulate packet transmission or packet reception might need to be modified for the specific driver.