iproute2 is a collection of utilities for controlling TCP and UDP IP networking and traffic control in Linux, in both IPv4 and IPv6 networks. It is currently maintained by Stephen Hemminger. The original author, Alexey Kuznetsov, was responsible for the QoS implementation in the Linux kernel.
iproute2 is intended to replace[1] an entire suite of standard Unix networking tools (often called “net-tools”) that were previously used for the tasks of configuring network interfaces, routing tables, and managing the ARP table, but which have not been developed since 2001.[2]
Tools replaced by iproute2 are:
| purpose | legacy "net-tools" | iproute2 |
|---|---|---|
| Address and link configuration | ifconfig | ip addr, ip link |
| Routing tables | route | ip route |
| Neighbors | arp | ip neigh |
| VLAN | vconfig | ip link |
| Tunnels | iptunnel | ip tunnel |
| Multicast | ipmaddr | ip maddr |
| Statistics | netstat | ss |
iproute2 unifies the syntax for these various commands, which evolved over many years of Unix development.