NETWORK_NAMESPACES(7)					     Linux Programmer's Manual					     NETWORK_NAMESPACES(7)

NAME

       network_namespaces - overview of Linux network namespaces

DESCRIPTION

       Network namespaces provide isolation of the system resources associated with networking: network devices, IPv4 and IPv6 protocol stacks, IP
       routing tables, firewall rules, the /proc/net directory (which is a symbolic link to /proc/PID/net), the /sys/class/net directory,  various
       files under /proc/sys/net, port numbers (sockets), and so on.

       A physical network device can live in exactly one network namespace.  When a network namespace is freed (i.e., when the last process in the
       namespace terminates), its physical network devices are moved back to the initial network namespace (not to the parent of the process).

       A virtual network (veth(4)) device pair provides a pipe-like abstraction that can be used to create tunnels between network namespaces, and
       can  be	used to create a bridge to a physical network device in another namespace.  When a namespace is freed, the veth(4) devices that it
       contains are destroyed.

       Use of network namespaces requires a kernel that is configured with the CONFIG_NET_NS option.

SEE ALSO

       nsenter(1), unshare(1), clone(2), veth(4), proc(5),  sysfs(5),  namespaces(7),  user_namespaces(7),  brctl(8),  ip(8),  ip-address(8),  ip-
       link(8), ip-netns(8), iptables(8), ovs-vsctl(8)

COLOPHON

       This  page is part of release 4.15 of the Linux man-pages project.  A description of the project, information about reporting bugs, and the
       latest version of this page, can be found at https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

Linux								    2018-02-02						     NETWORK_NAMESPACES(7)