Network management

This article Article description::describes possibilities for managing the network stack. Gentoo provides several tools for bringing up networking interfaces and managing network connections. In addition, Gentoo provides tools for managing dialup modem connections and for managing wifi connections and network authentication.

Overview
If you boot a Linux kernel all network interfaces are down. Something is needed to automatically bring them up, set static addresses, obtain dhcp leases on dynamic addresses, configure routes, DNS et cetera. Broadly speaking, we call this network management and netifrc or NetworkManager is used for this, or in simple situations dhcpcd can be used. In addition, specific tools are used for network authentication, ppp connections, vpn connections and optionally the dedicated dhcpcd client for dhcp leases.

Gentoo's standard for network management is using Gentoo net.* scripts aka netifrc. Alternatively, dhcpcd can be used in this role. Also work is ongoing to provide a new networking stack as part of OpenRC. If you only use static interfaces, you can already try this out by emerging OpenRC with the use flag and configuring  and.

Comparison of provided functionality
Gentoo provides several tools for managing your network stack. Some perform overall management, while others mainly perform specific subfunctions, but may also perform overall management.

Comparison of network managers
There are different solutions for overall management of network connections. The differences between them are as such: