From net-tools to iproute2: command equivalents
Posted on Fri, 06 Mar 2026 in Linux
Over 30 years with Linux, and it's hard to change what you're already used to. In my case, I've always used ifconfig, arp, route, and netstat to configure and diagnose the network. But these commands belong to the net-tools package, which has been replaced by iproute2 years ago.
net-tools vs iproute2¶
There are traditionally two ways of configuring the network in Linux:
- The old way: with commands like
ifconfig,arp,routeandnetstat, which are part of the net-tools package - The new way: mostly (but not entirely!) wrapped in a single
ipcommand, which is part of the iproute2 package
It seems like the latter was made "important" in Debian in 2008, which means every release since Debian 5 "lenny" (!) has featured the ip command.
I have been slowly training my brain to use the new commands but I sometimes forget some. So, here's a couple of equivalences from the old net-tools package to the new iproute2:
| net-tools | iproute2 | Shorter form | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
ifconfig |
ip address |
ip a |
Show/configure IP addresses |
ifconfig -s |
ip link |
ip l |
Show link stats (up/down, packet counts) |
route |
ip route |
ip r |
Show or modify routing table |
arp |
ip neigh |
ip n |
Show ARP/neighbors table |
netstat |
ss |
ss |
Show socket statistics |
Visual comparison¶
Here's the difference between using ip a and ip -br -c a:
ip a (full output)¶
ip -br -c a (brief and colored output)¶
My favorite alias¶
I often alias ip to provide much prettier output:
alias ip='ip -br -c'
This provides a much nicer and readable output, as you can see in the second image.
Do you still use the old commands or have you already switched to iproute2?