Learn › The Network Stack

Your Network Interface

Before you send a single packet, meet the hardware. Your NIC is a device with a driver, a MAC address, and counters you have never looked at.

Labs in this module

• The Interface - Every Linux system has network interfaces with names, MAC addresses, drivers, and counters. This lesson teaches you how to find and read all
• The Driver - Every NIC runs a kernel driver. The sysfs device/uevent file tells you which one, and modinfo tells you what it does.
• Interface Statistics - Your NIC counts every packet, every byte, and every error. The numbers are in /proc/net/dev, /sys/class/net, and ip -s link show.