Raspberry Pi User Manual page 63

C H A P T E R 3
The output of
ifconfig
❍ Link encap—The type of encapsulation used by the network, which on the Model B will
either read
Ethernet
tual loopback adaptor .
❍ Hwaddr—The Media Access Control (MAC) address of the network interface, written in
hexadecimal . This is unique for every device on the network, and each Pi has its own
MAC address, which is set at the factory .
❍ inet addr—The internet protocol (IP) address of the network interface . This is how you
find the Pi on the network if you're using it to run a network-accessible service, such as
a web server or file server .
❍ Bcast—The broadcast address for the network to which the Pi is connected . Any traffic
sent to this address will be received by every device on the network .
❍ Mask—The network mask, which controls the maximum size of the network to which
the Pi is connected . For most home users, this will read 255 .255 .255 .0 .
❍ MTU—The maximum transmission unit size, which is how big a single packet of data
can be before the system needs to split it into multiple packets .
T R O U B L E S H O O T I N G
is split into the following sections:
for the physical network port or for the vir-
Local Loopback
51
Figure 3-2:
The output of
ifconfig
on a Raspberry
Pi Model B