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EPAIR(4) FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual EPAIR(4) NAME epair -- A pair of virtual back-to-back connected Ethernet interfaces SYNOPSIS To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following line in your kernel configuration file: device epair Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the following line in loader.conf(5): if_epair_load="YES" DESCRIPTION The epair is a pair of Ethernet-like software interfaces, which are con- nected back-to-back with a virtual cross-over cable. Each epair interface pair is created at runtime using interface cloning. This is most easily done with the ifconfig(8) create command or using the cloned_interfaces variable in rc.conf(5). While for cloning you only give either epair or epair_n_ the epair pair will be named like epair_n_[ab]. This means the names of the first epair interfaces will be epair0a and epair0b. Like any other Ethernet interface, an epair needs to have a network ad- dress. Each epair will be assigned a locally administered address by de- fault, that is only guaranteed to be unique within one network stack. To change the default addresses one may use the SIOCSIFADDR ioctl(2) or if- config(8) utility. The basic intent is to provide connectivity between two virtual network stack instances. When connected to an if_bridge(4), one end of the in- terface pair can also be part of another (virtual) LAN. As with any other Ethernet interface, epair can have a vlan(4) configured on top of it. SEE ALSO ioctl(2), altq(4), bpf(4), if_bridge(4), vlan(4), loader.conf(5), rc.conf(5), ifconfig(8) HISTORY The epair interface first appeared in FreeBSD 8.0. AUTHORS The epair interface was written by Bjoern A. Zeeb, CK Software GmbH, un- der sponsorship from the FreeBSD Foundation. FreeBSD 13.0 March 18, 2015 FreeBSD 13.0
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | SEE ALSO | HISTORY | AUTHORS
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