"I've always assumed that ifup and ifdown were conditional commands that performed their assigned duties only if the interface device in question was up or down, as the command might be. I was dead wrong. I blame my mistake on being a programmer, rather than being stupid, but it's simply too close to call.
"The if in ifup, ifdown, and ifstatus is not a programmer's if--it's an abbreviation for interface. On the off chance that I'm not the only one who has misunderstood these commands because of their rather iffy names, here's what they really do and how they are used..."
