Meet net, Unix's unofficial default network manager.
It is the simplest (yet very possibly the most powerful) network manager ever created.
net is more about the concept rather than the implementation.
Here's how it works: All network configuration is stored inside /etc/net. Files will be used to store information about ip, mac, gateway and master. These files are called attributes, and they are specific to each device.
By default, devices are configured by creating a directory with its name under /etc/net. e.g. all attributes under /etc/net/eth0 will be specific to the eth0 interface.
If a device is defined in /etc/net, but it does not exist in your system, it is going to be automatically created as a bridge, which can then be set as a master to another interface.
If an attribute is stored directly in /etc/net, it will be applied to the default interface, which is going to be guessed by net. Since most personal devices only have one ethernet port, this can be used to make a very simple network configuration under /etc/net.
This is my personal network configuration currently:
/etc/net/gw /etc/net/ip /etc/net/mac
Optionally, if you do not provide an ip address, net is going to automatically fallback to a dhcp client. This is great for personal notebooks or terminals that you change location very often.
Due to its simplistic nature, it also works with wireless devices. The only difference is that instead of plugging a ethernet cable on your wireless receiver (duh), you're going to use a program (e.g iw or wpa_supplicant) in order to establish a connection to the router.
This concept is so simple, yet so effective, that it is hard to understand why this has not been done before, and why it is not the norm.
Advantages:
Disadvantages