1NETWORK_NAMESPACES(7) Linux Programmer's Manual NETWORK_NAMESPACES(7)
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6 network_namespaces - overview of Linux network namespaces
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9 Network namespaces provide isolation of the system resources associated
10 with networking: network devices, IPv4 and IPv6 protocol stacks, IP
11 routing tables, firewall rules, the /proc/net directory (which is a
12 symbolic link to /proc/PID/net), the /sys/class/net directory, various
13 files under /proc/sys/net, port numbers (sockets), and so on.
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15 A physical network device can live in exactly one network namespace.
16 When a network namespace is freed (i.e., when the last process in the
17 namespace terminates), its physical network devices are moved back to
18 the initial network namespace (not to the parent of the process).
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20 A virtual network (veth(4)) device pair provides a pipe-like abstrac‐
21 tion that can be used to create tunnels between network namespaces, and
22 can be used to create a bridge to a physical network device in another
23 namespace. When a namespace is freed, the veth(4) devices that it con‐
24 tains are destroyed.
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26 Use of network namespaces requires a kernel that is configured with the
27 CONFIG_NET_NS option.
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30 nsenter(1), unshare(1), clone(2), veth(4), proc(5), sysfs(5), names‐
31 paces(7), user_namespaces(7), brctl(8), ip(8), ip-address(8), ip-
32 link(8), ip-netns(8), iptables(8), ovs-vsctl(8)
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35 This page is part of release 4.15 of the Linux man-pages project. A
36 description of the project, information about reporting bugs, and the
37 latest version of this page, can be found at
38 https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
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42Linux 2018-02-02 NETWORK_NAMESPACES(7)