iproute2 – Advanced IP Routing Utilities

iproute2 is a collection of utilities for controlling TCP/IP networking and traffic control in Linux. It replaces legacy net-tools (ifconfig, route, netstat) with modern tools like ip, ss, and tc. As the standard networking toolkit for modern Linux systems, iproute2 provides comprehensive network configuration, routing, and traffic management capabilities.

Key Components

• ip – Network configuration (addresses, routes, links, tunnels)
• ss – Socket statistics (replacement for netstat)
• tc – Traffic control and QoS management
• bridge – Bridge administration
• nstat – Network statistics
• routel – List routes with pretty output

Installation

# Usually pre-installed on modern systems

# Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt install iproute2

# RHEL/CentOS/Fedora
sudo dnf install iproute

# Arch Linux
sudo pacman -S iproute2

Essential ip Commands

# Show IP addresses
ip addr show

# Add IP address
sudo ip addr add 192.168.1.100/24 dev eth0

# Show routing table
ip route show

# Add static route
sudo ip route add 10.0.0.0/8 via 192.168.1.1

# Show link status
ip link show

# Bring interface up/down
sudo ip link set eth0 up
sudo ip link set eth0 down

# Show neighbors (ARP table)
ip neigh show

# Create VLAN interface
sudo ip link add link eth0 name eth0.100 type vlan id 100

Traffic Control (tc)

# Add bandwidth limit
sudo tc qdisc add dev eth0 root tbf rate 10mbit burst 32kbit latency 400ms

# Show current qdiscs
tc qdisc show

# Add latency simulation
sudo tc qdisc add dev eth0 root netem delay 100ms

Use Cases

iproute2 is essential for network administration, policy routing, QoS implementation, network namespaces, container networking, and advanced routing scenarios.

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