FreeBSD 6 Unleashed

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Configuring the Network Card

• Configuring Network Settings with Sysinstall

• Configuring Network Settings Without Sysinstall

• Creating IP Aliases

• Mapping Names to IP Addresses with the /etc/hosts File

• Testing Network Connectivity with ping

• Configuring DNS with the /etc/resolv.conf File

• A Look at Other Network Configuration Files

The last chapter offered a crash course in networking the TCP/IP way. None of it (or very little) was FreeBSD-specific or really told you how to go about setting up your system to do networking properly. The chapter did, however, lay the groundwork for the information you'll learn in this chapter. Here, you learn about the various tools you can use to configure TCP/IP.

We won't be talking about specialized network services (such as web/HTTP, mail/SMTP, FTP, and so on) in this chapter; those topics are covered individually in later chapters of the book. Right now, we'll focus on the basics: getting the machine to talk to its peers on your network.