Administering your TCP/IP network

Stopping and restarting TCP/IP

If you are a privileged user and need to stop and restart TCP/IP, shut down and reboot the system as described in ``Starting and stopping the system''.

NOTE: Networking daemons that use TCP/IP, such as inetd(1Mtcp), named(1Mtcp), routed(1Mtcp), gated(1Mtcp), xntpd(1Mtcp) and aasd(1Mtcp), can be individually restarted without stopping and restarting TCP/IP itself.

Changes to client configuration, for example, name resolution using the Client Manager, also do not require TCP/IP to be restarted.

Overview of TCP/IP startup and shutdown

WARNING: This description of how the system handles TCP/IP and its network interfaces is subject to change from release to release.

The system's LAN networking interfaces are initialized, TCP/IP configured over them, and TCP/IP services are started, when the system goes to multi-user state (state 2; see init(1M)). Following are the main steps in this process:

The script /etc/rc2.d/S15nd is run to configure all the LAN networking interfaces that are currently present in the system.
The script /etc/rc2.d/S69inet is run to configure TCP/IP. Much of this work is handled by the initialize command:
- initialize reads /etc/confnet.d/inet/interface (see interface(4tcp)) and calls the appropriate command to link each LAN networking interface defined in the interface file to the base of the TCP/IP stack.
- initialize sets up the IP address, netmask and broadcast address for each interface.
- initialize reads /etc/inet/config (see config(4tcp)) and invokes the TCP/IP routing daemons, service daemons, and other commands that this defines.
The S69inet script next checks that inetd(1Mtcp) is running before exiting.

TCP/IP services are stopped, and the system's networking interfaces are taken down when the system goes to a states 0, 1, 5 or 6; for example, when it is shut down:

The script /etc/rc2.d/K69inet is run to kill all the daemons listed in /etc/inet/config, and to tear down the TCP/IP stack.
The script /etc/rc2.d/K85nd is run to shut down the networking interfaces.