Introduction

It's needless to say that a network card and its respective network configuration are crucial for an operating system such as Oracle Solaris 11. I've been working with Oracle Solaris since version 7, and its network setup was always very simple, using files such as /etc/hostname.<interface>, /etc/hosts, /etc/defaultrouter, /etc/resolv.conf, and /etc/hostname. At that time, there wasn't anything else apart from these files, and this was very suitable because configuring a network takes only a few minutes. On the other hand, there wasn't any flexibility when the network configuration had to be changed. Moreover, at that time, there weren't any wireless interfaces on portable computers, and Oracle Solaris only worked with SPARC processors. That time has passed.

This network architecture was kept until Oracle Solaris 10 even when hundreds of modifications and new features were introduced on Oracle Solaris 10. Now, in Oracle Solaris 11, there are new commands and different methods...