“If you’re an oldtyme network admin clinging possessively to
your old Linux routing utilities in the net-tools
package–ifconfig, route, arp, netstat, nameif, and so forth–it is
perfectly OK if you continue to do so. They get the job done.
However, they have some limitations that may matter to you.“With net-tools all packets are treated the same, and all
routing is based only on the destination. This is OK if all you
need are the simplest static routes. But if you want to be able to
configure more complex scenarios simply and efficiently, or set up
tunnels easily, or set different priorities depending on the type
of data, or assign multiple IPs to an interface without using
aliasing, you want iproute2…”
Related Story:
LinuxPorts.Com:
New Release of Networking-HOWTO(Mar 31, 2000)