Arguments:

• dev NAME (default)

  -- NAME specifies the network device on which to operate.

• up and down

  -- change the state of the device to UP or DOWN.

• arp on or arp off

  -- change the NOARP flag on the device.

  1cm NB. This operation is not allowed if the device is in state UP. Though neither the ip utility nor the kernel check for this condition. You can get unpredictable results changing this flag while the device is running.

• multicast on or multicast off

  -- change the MULTICAST flag on the device.

• dynamic on or dynamic off

  -- change the DYNAMIC flag on the device.

• name NAME

  -- change the name of the device. This operation is not recommended if the device is running or has some addresses already configured.

• txqueuelen NUMBER or txqlen NUMBER

  -- change the transmit queue length of the device.

• mtu NUMBER

  -- change the MTU of the device.

• address LLADDRESS

  -- change the station address of the interface.

• broadcast LLADDRESS, brd LLADDRESS or peer LLADDRESS

  -- change the link layer broadcast address or the peer address when the interface is POINTOPOINT.

  1cm NB. For most devices (f.e. for Ethernet) changing the link layer broadcast address will break networking. Do not use it, if you do not understand what this operation really does.

• netns PID

  -- move the device to the network namespace associated with the process PID.

1cm NB. The PROMISC and ALLMULTI flags are considered obsolete and should not be changed administratively, though the ip utility will allow that.