Arguments:

• dev NAME

  -- the name of the device to add the address to.

• local ADDRESS (default)

  -- the address of the interface. The format of the address depends on the protocol. It is a dotted quad for IP and a sequence of hexadecimal halfwords separated by colons for IPv6. The ADDRESS may be followed by a slash and a decimal number which encodes the network prefix length.

• peer ADDRESS

  -- the address of the remote endpoint for pointopoint interfaces. Again, the ADDRESS may be followed by a slash and a decimal number, encoding the network prefix length. If a peer address is specified, the local address cannot have a prefix length. The network prefix is associated with the peer rather than with the local address.

• broadcast ADDRESS

  -- the broadcast address on the interface.

  It is possible to use the special symbols '+' and '-' instead of the broadcast address. In this case, the broadcast address is derived by setting/resetting the host bits of the interface prefix.

  1cm NB. Unlike ifconfig, the ip utility does not set any broadcast address unless explicitly requested.

• label NAME

  -- Each address may be tagged with a label string. In order to preserve compatibility with Linux-2.0 net aliases, this string must coincide with the name of the device or must be prefixed with the device name followed by colon.

• scope SCOPE_VALUE

  -- the scope of the area where this address is valid. The available scopes are listed in file /etc/iproute2/rt_scopes. Predefined scope values are:

  • global -- the address is globally valid.
  • site -- (IPv6 only) the address is site local, i.e. it is valid inside this site.
  • link -- the address is link local, i.e. it is valid only on this device.
  • host -- the address is valid only inside this host.

  Appendix A (p. of this document) contains more details on address scopes.