UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook, 5th Edition

14	Physical Networking

Regardless of whether your systems live in a data center, a cloud, or an old missile silo, one element they have in common is the need to communicate on a network. The ability to move data quickly and reliably is essential in every environment. If there’s one area in which UNIX technology has touched human lives and influenced other operating systems, it’s in the practical realization of large-scale packetized data transport.

Networks are following the same trail blazed by servers in that the physical and logical views of the network are increasingly separated by a virtualization layer that has its own ...