In many Unix operating systems, the network devices have appearances in the
/dev directory. This is not so in Linux. In Linux, the network devices
are created dynamically in software, and they do not require device files to
be present.
In the majority of cases, the network device is automatically created by the
device driver (while it is initializing and locating your hardware). For
example, the Ethernet device driver creates eth[0..n] interfaces
sequentially as it locates your Ethernet hardware. The first Ethernet card
found becomes eth0, the second eth1 etc.
In some cases though, notably with slip and ppp, the network devices
are created through the action of some user program. The same sequential
device numbering applies, but the devices are not created automatically
at boot time. The reason for this is that unlike Ethernet devices, the number
of active slip or ppp devices may vary during the uptime of the
machine. These cases will be covered in more detail in later sections.
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