Do I need to run netif stop/start if IP is changed?

[Peter Steele]

We have systems that upon initial configuration have no IP addresses
assigned. Their rc.conf entries look like this:

 

ifconfig_nfe0="UP"

ifconfig_nfe1="UP"

cloned_interfaces="lagg0"

ifconfig_lagg0="laggproto failover laggport nfe0 laggport nfe1"

defaultrouter="0.0.0.0"

 

The user later runs a tool and specifies the IP address to use for a
given system. This tool modifies ifconfig and default router lines, e.g.

 

ifconfig_lagg0="laggproto failover laggport nfe0 laggport nfe1
192.168.17.49 netmask 255.255.240.0"

defaultrouter="192.168.16.1"

 

and also executes explicit ifconfig and route add commands that match
the entries in rc.conf. 

 

The question is, should we also execute a netif stop/start sequence when
this IP/router information is assigned? Are there other services that
should also be stopped/restarted when the IP is set? Ideally, we want to
avoid having to reboot the box to set the IP as we are doing.