Create Multiple IP Addresses to One Single Network Interface

The concept of creating or configuring multiple IP addresses on a single network interface is called IP aliasing. IP aliasing is very useful for setting up multiple virtual sites on Apache using one single network interface with different IP addresses on a single subnet network.

The main advantage of using this IP aliasing is, you don’t need to have a physical adapter attached to each IP, but instead you can create multiple or many virtual interfaces (aliases) to a single physical card.

Create Multiple IP Addresses in One NiC

The instructions given here are applies to all major Linux distributions like Red Hat, Fedora, and CentOS. Creating multiple interfaces and assign IP address to it manually is a daunting task. Here we’ll see how we can assign IP address to it defining a set of IP range. Also understand how we are going to create a virtual interface and assign different range of IP Address to an interface in one go. In this article we used LAN IP‘s, so replace those with ones you will be using.

Creating Virtual Interface and Assign Multiple IP Addresses

Here I have an interface called “ifcfg-eth0“, the default interface for the Ethernet device. If you’ve attached second Ethernet device, then there would be an “ifcfg-eth1” device and so on for each device you’ve attached. These device network files are located in “/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/” directory. Navigate to the directory and do “ls -l” to list all devices.

# cd /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/
# ls -l

Sample Output

ifcfg-eth0   ifdown-isdn    ifup-aliases  ifup-plusb     init.ipv6-global
ifcfg-lo     ifdown-post    ifup-bnep     ifup-post      net.hotplug
ifdown       ifdown-ppp     ifup-eth      ifup-ppp       network-functions
ifdown-bnep  ifdown-routes  ifup-ippp     ifup-routes    network-functions-ipv6
ifdown-eth   ifdown-sit     ifup-ipv6     ifup-sit
ifdown-ippp  ifdown-tunnel  ifup-isdn     ifup-tunnel
ifdown-ipv6  ifup           ifup-plip     ifup-wireless

Let’s assume that we want to create three additional virtual interfaces to bind three IP addresses (172.16.16.126, 172.16.16.127, and 172.16.16.128) to the NIC. So, we need to create three additional alias files, while “ifcfg-eth0” keeps the same primary IP address. This is how we moving forward to setup three aliases to bind the following IP addresses.

Adapter            IP Address                Type
-------------------------------------------------
eth0              172.16.16.25            Primary
eth0:0            172.16.16.26            Alias 1
eth0:1            172.16.16.27            Alias 2
eth0:2            172.16.16.28            Alias 3

Where “:X” is the device (interface) number to create the aliases for interface eth0. For each alias you must assign a number sequentially. For example, we copying existing parameters of interface “ifcfg-eth0” in virtual interfaces called ifcfg-eth0:0, ifcfg-eth0:1 and ifcfg-eth0:2. Go into the network directory and create the files as shown below.

# cd /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/
# cp ifcfg-eth0 ifcfg-eth0:0
# cp ifcfg-eth0 ifcfg-eth0:1
# cp ifcfg-eth0 ifcfg-eth0:2

Open a file “ifcfg-eth0” and view the contents.

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