Frequently Asked Question

Why does everyone use ip now instead of ifconfig?

ifconfig, route, and arp were the classic Unix networking tools, shipped in the net-tools package. They date from the 1980s, never gained proper IPv6 support, and worked through a clunky ioctl interface that the kernel maintainers eventually wanted to retire. The ip command, from the iproute2 project, uses the modern netlink interface to talk to the kernel, supports everything the new networking subsystems can do (VLANs, namespaces, policy routing, traffic shaping), and unifies several legacy tools under a single consistent syntax.

All major distributions deprecated net-tools more than a decade ago. ifconfig may not even be installed by default on a modern Debian or Fedora system. The modern equivalents are ip addr, ip link, ip route, and ip neigh. Old tutorials still use the legacy commands, which is the main reason people remain confused about which to learn, the answer in 2026 is ip.