Difference Between ent0, en0 and et0

AIX differentiates between hardware adapters, their interfaces and protocols standards associated.

To recognize interface card AIX uses three notations:

ent, en and et.

All are different and are described below and the sake of completeness I am using 0 at the end:

ent0:

The notation ent0 is used to specify the hardware adapter. It has nothing to do with the TCP/IP address. The parameters associated with ent0 can be seen as below:

# lsattr –El ent0

It will show parameters related to card.

It shows adapter_names, alt_addr, auto_recovery, backup_adapter, hash_mode, mode, netaddr, noloss_failover, num_retries, retry_time, use_alt_addr, use_jumbo_frame.

en0:

en0 represents the interface associated with hardware adapter ent0. The notation en0 is used for Standard Ethernet(inet). The TCP/IP address is associated with this interface.

The parameters associated with en0 can be seen as below:

#lsattr –El en0

It’ll shows all the parameters related with the interface en0 of the adapter ent0.

It shows alias4, alias6, arp, authority, broadcast=1500, mtu, netaddr, netaddr6, netmask, prefixlen, remmtu, rfc1323, security, state, tcp_mssdflt, tcp_nodelay, tcp_recvspace, tcp_sendspace.

Rest everything is same except mtu(Maximum Transfer Unit) value. Which is 1500 as per the standard ethernet protocol.

et0:

et0 represents the interface associated with hardware adapter ent0. The notation et0 is used for IEEE 802.3 Ethernet(inet). If you are using standard ethernet protocol then it will not have TCP/IP address.

The parameters associated with et0 can be seen as below:

#lsattr –El et0

It’ll shows all the parameters related with the interface et0 of the adapter ent0.

It shows alias4, alias6, arp, authority, broadcast, mtu=1492, netaddr, netaddr6, netmask, prefixlen, remmtu, rfc1323, security, state, tcp_mssdflt, tcp_nodelay, tcp_recvspace, tcp_sendspace.

Note here as well that the MTU shown will be 1492 as per IEEE 802.3 standard. Rest all parameters will be same. Also, netaddr, netmask fields will be empty fr et0.