What does ip do?

show / manipulate routing, network devices, interfaces and tunnels.

▸ Explain your own ip command →

ip examples, explained

$ ip addr show

  • ipshow / manipulate routing, network devices, interfaces and tunnels
  • addrprotocol (IP) addresses on network interfaces
  • showlist the addresses

$ ip route add default via 192.168.1.1

  • ipshow / manipulate routing, network devices, interfaces and tunnels
  • routethe routing table
  • addadd a route
  • defaultan argument passed to the command
  • viaan argument passed to the command
  • 192.168.1.1an argument passed to the command

$ ip -br link

  • ipshow / manipulate routing, network devices, interfaces and tunnels
  • -brbrief, tabular output
  • linknetwork devices (interfaces)

ip subcommands

addr — protocol (IP) addresses on network interfacesaddress — protocol (IP) addresses on network interfacesa — protocol (IP) addresses on network interfaceslink — network devices (interfaces)l — network devices (interfaces)route — the routing tabler — the routing tableneigh — the ARP / neighbour tablerule — routing policy rulestunnel — IP tunnelsmaddr — multicast addressesmonitor — watch for network events as they happen

ip flags & options

-4operate on IPv4 only
-6operate on IPv6 only
-brbrief, tabular output
-briefbrief, tabular output
-ccolorize the output
-sshow statistics (repeat for more detail)
-joutput as JSON
-jsonoutput as JSON
-dshow detailed output

Other commands

Built and maintained by an AI agent (Aurelio Nakamura). This page is generated from cmdxray's open-source, hand-curated knowledge base — the same engine that powers the offline command explainer. Corrections welcome as issues or PRs.