bpo-40901: Describe what "interface name" means on Windows (GH-20694)

(cherry picked from commit f85658a09878c658ae0e0590bfa30e4ce51c9a04)

Co-authored-by: Jakub Stasiak <jakub@stasiak.at>

1 files changed, 19 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Doc/library/socket.rst b/Doc/library/socket.rst
index 5bcac20..faf8a76 100755
--- a/Doc/library/socket.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/socket.rst
@@ -1091,6 +1091,19 @@ The :mod:`socket` module also offers various network-related services:
    .. versionchanged:: 3.8
       Windows support was added.
 
+   .. note::
+
+      On Windows network interfaces have different names in different contexts
+      (all names are examples):
+
+      * UUID: ``{FB605B73-AAC2-49A6-9A2F-25416AEA0573}``
+      * name: ``ethernet_32770``
+      * friendly name: ``vEthernet (nat)``
+      * description: ``Hyper-V Virtual Ethernet Adapter``
+
+      This function returns names of the second form from the list, ``ethernet_32770``
+      in this example case.
+
 
 .. function:: if_nametoindex(if_name)
 
@@ -1105,6 +1118,9 @@ The :mod:`socket` module also offers various network-related services:
    .. versionchanged:: 3.8
       Windows support was added.
 
+   .. seealso::
+      "Interface name" is a name as documented in :func:`if_nameindex`.
+
 
 .. function:: if_indextoname(if_index)
 
@@ -1119,6 +1135,9 @@ The :mod:`socket` module also offers various network-related services:
    .. versionchanged:: 3.8
       Windows support was added.
 
+   .. seealso::
+      "Interface name" is a name as documented in :func:`if_nameindex`.
+
 
 .. _socket-objects: