Iproute2 is a collection of utilites for controlling TCP / IP networking and Traffic Control in Linux. It is currently maintained by Stephen Hemminger shemminger@osdl.org. The original author, Alexey Kuznetsov, is well known for QoS implementation in Linux kernel.
Most network configuration manuals still refer to ifconfig as network configuration tool, but that’s wrong, because ifconfig is known to behave inadequately in modern network environment. Its usage should be deprecated, but most Linux distributions still include it. Moreover, most network configuration systems make use of ifconfig and thus provide a limited feature set. /etc/net project aims to support most modern network technologies, it doesnt’t use ifconfig and allows a system administrator to make use of all iproute2 features, including traffic control.
Iproute2 is usually shipped in a package called iproute or iproute2 and consists of several tools, of which the most important are ip and tc. ip controls IPv4 and IPv6 configuration and tc stands for traffic control. Both tools print detailed usage messages and are accompanied by a set of manpages.