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network_namespaces(7) — Linux manual page

NAME | DESCRIPTION | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

network...espaces(7) Miscellaneous Information Manualnetwork...espaces(7)

NAME         top

       network_namespaces - overview of Linux network namespaces

DESCRIPTION         top

       Network namespaces provide isolation of the system resources
       associated with networking: network devices, IPv4 and IPv6
       protocol stacks, IP routing tables, firewall rules, the /proc/net
       directory (which is a symbolic link to /proc/pid/net), the
       /sys/class/net directory, various files under /proc/sys/net, port
       numbers (sockets), and so on.  In addition, network namespaces
       isolate the UNIX domain abstract socket namespace (see unix(7)).

       A physical network device can live in exactly one network
       namespace.  When a network namespace is freed (i.e., when the last
       process in the namespace terminates), its physical network devices
       are moved back to the initial network namespace (not to the
       namespace of the parent of the process).

       A virtual network (veth(4)) device pair provides a pipe-like
       abstraction that can be used to create tunnels between network
       namespaces, and can be used to create a bridge to a physical
       network device in another namespace.  When a namespace is freed,
       the veth(4) devices that it contains are destroyed.

       Use of network namespaces requires a kernel that is configured
       with the CONFIG_NET_NS option.

SEE ALSO         top

       nsenter(1), unshare(1), clone(2), veth(4), proc(5), sysfs(5),
       namespaces(7), user_namespaces(7), brctl(8), ip(8), ip-address(8),
       ip-link(8), ip-netns(8), iptables(8), ovs-vsctl(8)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the man-pages (Linux kernel and C library
       user-space interface documentation) project.  Information about
       the project can be found at 
       ⟨https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/⟩.  If you have a bug report
       for this manual page, see
       ⟨https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git/tree/CONTRIBUTING⟩.
       This page was obtained from the tarball man-pages-6.19.tar.gz
       fetched from
       ⟨https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/man-pages/⟩ on
       2026-09-09.  If you discover any rendering problems in this HTML
       version of the page, or you believe there is a better or more up-
       to-date source for the page, or you have corrections or
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       part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       [email protected]

Linux man-pages 6.19            2026-02-08           network...espaces(7)

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Pages that refer to this page: getino(1),  nsenter(1),  unshare(1),  clone(2),  lttng-ust(3),  veth(4),  proc_pid_net(5),  systemd.socket(5),  namespaces(7),  rdma-system(8)

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