Using any network interface whatsoever

[Mike Meyer]

In <20060408224140.GA15366 at outcold.yadt.co.uk>, David Taylor <davidt at yadt.co.uk> typed:
> That doesn't quite work, though.  Unless you require everyone wanting
> to distinguish between LAN and WAN interfaces uses different types
> of hardware for each card, they'll still end up with xl0 and xl1
> (or whatever), which is in no way better than eth0 and eth1,

You're right - but at least you have the option of using different
types of cards to get different names. I agree that this sucks, but
it's better than nothing.

I tried to find out how to tell the difference between ethernet
interfaces on Linux. Seems that the 2.6 kernel can assign different
names to the ethernet devices at each reboot. Um, yeah. Solutions for
this problem all seem to involve assigning an arbitrary name based on
the MAC address.

This has two problems: 1) you have to have a mapping somewhere of mac
addresses to cards so you know where to plug in the wan port vs. the
lan port. 2) if you replace a dead card with an identical card, your
configuration breaks.

	<mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>		http://www.mired.org/consulting.html
Independent Network/Unix/Perforce consultant, email for more information.