Managing your network interface with ethtool
NIC Check
© Lead Image © Sean Gladwell, Fotolia.com
If ping won't solve your network configuration issues, try ethtool, a powerful utility that lets you manage configuration settings for your network interface card.
The sheer volume of traffic on a super-busy and ever-changing production network makes any oddities very tricky to diagnose. Many of the more serious networking headaches are devastatingly disruptive to business operations. Additionally, the constantly changing nature of busy networks, coupled with the 24/7 attacks of varying competency, mean you need to know your stuff and maintain eagle-eyed diligence in order to catch issues.
If you're like me, though, you probably try to solve these kinds of issues in a simple and elegant way. To alter the network settings on a NIC (Network Interface Card), you have almost certainly used the now deprecated ifconfig command and its successor the ip command.
Another useful utility you can use to troubleshoot network problems is ethtool. The malleable ethtool isn't concerned with IP addresses, VLANs, and subnets. Instead, ethtool lets you manage and configure software drivers and hardware settings that control network interfaces.
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