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I'm a complete noob at Ubuntu. I'm having to do some work on it, and was told to explain what happens when you type in the command "ifconfig", but I have no idea what single thing of this means. Please explain to me, in the most understandable way possible, what any of the below means:

eth9      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 4c:cc:6a:3f:37:64  
          inet addr:10.170.148.199  Bcast:10.170.151.255  Mask:255.255.252.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::4ecc:6aff:fe3f:3764/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:49704 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:94 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:4871401 (4.8 MB)  TX bytes:21656 (21.6 KB)
dufte
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Campers
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    Somehow this 'smeels' like homework for school. You can try by starting to read the man page of ifconfig, as it explains what ifconfig can be used for. Open a terminal and enter man ifconfig. Man pages are common tools to give manuals to us users. – dufte Sep 13 '16 at 14:22
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    Wiki has some basic informations as well - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ifconfig – dufte Sep 13 '16 at 14:24

1 Answers1

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Okay, while I have the suspicion you are asking us a homework question, here we go.

eth9      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 4c:cc:6a:3f:37:64
  • The interface (network card, NIC for short) is known as eth9 to the operating system.
  • The type of the interface is Ethernet.

  • The hardware address, or MAC address of your NIC is 4c:cc:6a:3f:37:64

          inet addr:10.170.148.199  Bcast:10.170.151.255  Mask:255.255.252.0

These are the IPv4 settings associated to the NIC

  • Your IPv4 is a private address 10.170.148.199
  • Your broadcast address is 10.170.151.255

  • Your netmask is 255.255.252.0, which basically means that your local network will have the last digit vary between 1 and 254

          inet6 addr: fe80::4ecc:6aff:fe3f:3764/64 Scope:Link

  • This is your local IPv6 address (fe80::4ecc:6aff:fe3f:3764/64). These are local only.

  • Scope: Link -> Not sure, but from what I understand the IPv6 is limited to the link

          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1

  • UP -> NIC is up

  • BROADCAST -> NIC can broadcast to the network
  • RUNNING -> I don't know
  • MULTICAST -> NIC can do multicast

MTU stands for "Maximum transmission unit" and is the largest packet that may be used on the NIC. Metric: A number indicating the weight of using this NIC. This is useful for routing. (A lower metric will be preferred over a higher metric. You could, for example, set a more expensive line to a higher Metric)

          RX packets:49704 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:94 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:4871401 (4.8 MB)  TX bytes:21656 (21.6 KB)

Transmission statistics. RX -> Received TX -> Transmitted

jawtheshark
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