Python Network Programming

How it works...

This recipe code uses a low-level socket feature to find out the interfaces present on the system. The single list_interfaces() method creates a socket object and finds the network interface information from manipulating this object. It does so by making a call to the fnctl module's ioctl() method. The fnctl module interfaces with some Unix routines, for example, fnctl(). This interface performs an I/O control operation on the underlying file descriptor socket, which is obtained by calling the fileno() method of the socket object.

The additional parameter of the ioctl() method includes the SIOCGIFADDR constant defined in the C socket library and a data structure produced by the struct module's pack() function. The memory address ...