>>> As far as I am aware, each network device should have a different MAC,
>>> couldn't this be used to identify which device is which ?
>> Could, but whenever you have to change a NIC after a thunderstorm you 
>> are buggered...
>>   Cheers,
>>   Ron.
>>     That's exactly the most frequent case. There's also the following 
>> case: you break your computer but not the disk. Instead of making a 
>> new install on another computer, you just exchange the disks. Your 
>> network was configured for eth0 but there's no more eth0, udev has 
>> renamed it eth1, because eth0 is the NIC of the broken computer.

>     In any case the admin must either hack /etc/network/interfaces or 
> the udev rules. But I think this little inconveniency is better than 
> the meaningless device names promoted by Systemd people.

>     Remains the problem of the namespace. Why not use nic0, nic1, etc 
> as a namespace for ethernet?

>     Didier