EDSC(4)

💖 NAME 💖

okay so bestie, welcome to EDSC(4) — that’s the manual name, and it lives in the Kernel Interfaces Manual. This whole page is about edsc, the Ethernet discard network interface. ✨

🛠️ SYNOPSIS 🛠️

device edsc

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

The edsc interface is a software discard mechanism — yes, an entire interface with discard main character energy 😭 — and it’s used for performance analysis and software testing. It imitates an Ethernet device, which allows for its use in conjunction with such drivers as if_bridge(4) and vlan(4). iykyk 💅

As with other network interfaces, an edsc interface must have network addresses assigned for each address family with which it is to be used. These addresses may be set or changed with the SIOCSIFADDR ioctl(2) or ifconfig(8) utility.

Each edsc interface is created at runtime using interface cloning. This is most easily done with the ifconfig(8) create command or using the cloned_interfaces variable in rc.conf(5). slay, runtime cloning 🫶

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

• ioctl(2)
• arp(4)
• if_bridge(4)
• inet(4)
• intro(4)
• vlan(4)
• rc.conf(5)
• arp(8)
• ifconfig(8)

🧚 HISTORY 🧚

The edsc device was derived from the disc(4) device and first appeared in FreeBSD 6.3. This manpage was adapted from disc(4). iconic lineage fr fr 👑

⚠️ CAVEATS ⚠️

Since outgoing packets are just discarded by edsc, ARP requests stay unreplied. Consequently, an IP packet cannot be sent via edsc until a static arp(4) entry is created for its next hop using arp(8).

no cap, this is the important bit: no ARP reply means no IP packet sending until that static entry is there. 💀

Initially an edsc interface has a zero link level address. It can be changed with ifconfig(8) lladdr if needed.

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And that’s the whole page, bestie! This version comes from Debian, dated March 25, 2007, and it’s EDSC(4) — go forth and discard with main character energy 💅🌈🎀