Ip Link Show Type

Luke Hebert

- 2 minutes read - 270 words

Need to quickly figure out which interfaces on a Linux box are physical, virtual, or tunneling? The ip link show type and ip address show type commands let you filter network interfaces by their type in a single step, saving you from sifting through a long ip link dump.

Overview

The ip link show type or ip address show type command displays network interfaces and their respective types. The type option filters the output to show only interfaces of a specific kind, or, when used without a specific type, lists the possible types recognized by the ip command.

Possible Interface Types

The ip command supports a wide range of interface types, each representing a different kind of network device or virtual interface. Some common examples include:

Physical Interfaces

  • ether: Standard Ethernet interfaces.
  • bond: Bonded interfaces (combining multiple physical interfaces for redundancy or increased bandwidth).
  • bridge: Bridge interfaces (used for creating network bridges).

Virtual Interfaces

  • vlan: VLAN interfaces (for virtual local area networks).
  • veth: Virtual Ethernet pair (used for connecting network namespaces).
  • vxlan: VXLAN interfaces (for overlay networks).
  • dummy: Dummy interfaces (for testing purposes).
  • macvlan: MACVLAN interfaces (allowing multiple MAC addresses on a single physical interface).
  • macvtap: MACVTAP interfaces (similar to MACVLAN but providing a tap device).

Tunneling Interfaces

  • gre: GRE tunnels.
  • ipip: IP over IP tunnels.
  • sit: IPv6 over IPv4 tunnels.

Example Usage

To list all available interface types:

ip link show type
ip a show type

To show only Ethernet interfaces:

ip link show type ether
ip a show type ether

To show only bridge interfaces:

ip link show type bridge
ip a show type bridge