Hello everyone, this may be an incredibly simple question, however when I run the command ifconfig in ubuntu 16.04, the eth0 option is not available. Instead, i see lo, and wlp58s0.


If it helps, I'm using a dell xps 13 9350 which does not have an ethernet port. Is this what this (eth0) is for?

Yes

The ethn device-naming convention was set aside some time ago. The device names are now more descriptive of what-and-where the device actually is. (For example, on my Linux VM, the network adapters look like enp0s8.)

This was done to help sysadmins in very large "shops" where they might be mucking around with physical network patch-cables. When devices were just "sequentially numbered," not only was it difficult to tell which device was which, but the numbering could actually change if new NICs were inserted, requiring a great deal of messy software re-configuration as a result of a hardware change that ought to have had no such impact.

Traditionally eth0 was used for the wired ethernet port and wlan0 for the wireless card, where both were present. But you don't have a wired port, so apparently the kernel gives the name eth0 to the only network card it can detect. The new udev name, as you can see, begins with wl for wireless, so it's actually more descriptive. The rest of the name indicates the bus address.

If you want to force use of the old nomenclature, boot with net.ifnames=0 on the kernel command line.

I believe it's udev rules which handle the device node creation and naming convention for device nodes under Linux.