Ethernet

From Wikipedia:

Ethernet is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 1983 as IEEE 802.3. Ethernet has since been refined to support higher bit rates, a greater number of nodes, and longer link distances, but retains much backward compatibility.

Setup

When installing setup-alpine should give you the option to easily setup Ethernet or if you need to setup Ethernet after installation you can use setup-interfaces.

setup-interfaces

start by running this command:

# setup-interfaces

Available interfaces are: eth0 wlan0.
Enter '?' for help on bridges, bonding and vlans.
Which one do you want to initialize? (or '?' or 'done') [eth0]

choose eth0 (or your Ethernet device, Ethernet devices usually start with e )

if asked:

Ip address for eth0? (or 'dhcp', 'none', '?') [dhcp]

choose dhcp

Now it will ask Do you to do any manual network configuration? (y/n) [n]

unless you need to do manual network configuration choose n, if you need to do manual network configuration choose y and it will open the /etc/network/interfaces file.

if setup-interfaces doesnt do this automatically, then you need to start (or restart) the networking service:

# /etc/init.d/networking --quiet start &

and add it to start on boot:

# rc-update add networking boot

Tips / Troubleshooting

Sometimes an ethernet interface will not be detected by the installation media. In this case, you may have to use an alternate interface for installation (e.g. a usb to ethernet adapter) upon which after install / reboot the interface will display. You may also try installing any missing packages that contain the drivers.