Under Red Hat Enterprise Linux, all network communications occur between configured software interfaces and physical networking devices connected to the system.

The configuration files for network interfaces are located in the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ directory. The scripts used to activate and deactivate these network interfaces are also located here. Although the number and type of interface files can differ from system to system, there are three categories of files that exist in this directory:

The files in each of these categories work together to enable various network devices.

This chapter explores the relationship between these files and how they are used.