I just remembered:
I vaguely recall that a system swapped eth0 and eth1
when replacing a
2.0.x kernel with a 2.2.x kernel (or 2.4 to 2.6, or something like
that). Which didn't surprise me much, and is why God made rc files
editable.
And ifrename is cool.
I've encountered _zero_ instances of network interfaces changing their
device nodes on RHEL/CentOS, under any circumstances, for the simple
reason of DEVICE and HWADDR directives being used in the default
/etc/sysconfig/networking/devices/ifcfg-* files.
DEVICE=eth0
HWADDR=11:22:33:44:55:66
Which can optionally be used to assign devices names of your choosing
such as 'lan' and 'wan'.
I guess the 'network interfaces have come up in a different order' scenario
seems to be primarily a Debian/*buntu, etc. one (that has never arisen
in my use-cases), and mostly involves USB (and other equally flaky
hotplug hardware schemes).
Did I mention that ifrename is cool? ;->