How to Restart the Network Service on CentOS 8 or RHEL 8

This tutorial will help you to Start/Stop and Restart the network services on a CentOS 8 or RHEL 8 Linux system. Here are the two methods available. We prefer method 1 to use.

Method 1 – Using NetworkManager Service

In CentOS 8/RHEL 8 when you run the command service network restart you would get the following error:

# service network restart
Redirecting to /bin/systemctl restart network.service
Failed to restart network.service: Unit network.service not found.

The above command works on CentOS 6/7 only, so you need using another command to start the network service on CentOS 8.

Get the network service name in CentOS8/RHEL 8.

# systemctl list-units | grep Net
NetworkManager-wait-online.service    loaded active exited    Network Manager Wait Online       
NetworkManager.service     loaded active running   Network Manager        
network-online.target      loaded active active    Network is Online      
network-pre.target         loaded active active    Network (Pre)          
network.target  loaded active active    Network 

Use the followings commands to start/stop network service on your CentOS/RHEL 8 Linux system.

sudo systemctl start NetworkManager.service
sudo systemctl stop NetworkManager.service

Use the followings commands to restart network service on your CentOS/RHEL 8 Linux system.

sudo systemctl restart NetworkManager.service

Method 2 – Using nmcli Tool

Alternatively, the nmcli is the command-line utility for the managing NetworkManager on CentOS/RHEL 8 Linux system. You can simply use this utility to stop/start network service on your CentOS 8 or RHEL 8 system.

# nmcli networking -h
Usage: nmcli networking { COMMAND | help }
COMMAND := { [ on | off | connectivity ] }
  on
  off
  connectivity [check]

sudo nmcli networking off
sudo nmcli networking on