Allow me to say from the get-go that I realize that this question is
flame-bait. It is not intended to be such -- the question came up in a
technical discussion, and none concerned had a technical answer. That
said, what I want is a technical answer, not something that belongs on
-advocacy. Okay? Good.

To wit, then, what I want to know is why *BSD is using the underlying
hardware as the basis for the names of network interfaces, i.e. xl0,
ep0, rtk0, etc. I know there are historical reasons, and that almost
every other UNIX out there (except one :) does what *BSD does, but it
_seems_ better from a usage & automation (scripting) standpoint to
have all ethernet interfaces called simply "ethX". Why should userland
have to care about what the hardware is?

The possible reasons I could come up with were history -- "it's always
been that way and no-one wants to/has time to change it" -- or a
technical design reason that I'm not thinking of. 

So. Which one is it?

Regards,

Dan
-- 
Dan Debertin
airboss@nodewarrior.org
www.nodewarrior.org

Writing software is more fun than working.