IP setting can be done temporary or persistent. in the fist case, the interface must be plumbed in the following way: # ifconfig nxge0 plumb # ifconfig <intferface> <ip address> broadcast <bcast address> netmask <netmask> If you want your configuration to persist across reboots you'd need to do the following... Each machine on a TCP/IP network gets its configuration information from the following TCP/IP configuration files and network databases: /etc/hostname.interface Read more...