These changes from Eric W. Biederman introduced network namespaces in 2.6.14. commit 881d966b48b035ab3f3aeaae0f3d3f9b584f45b2 commit e730c15519d09ea528b4d2f1103681fa5937c0e6 Later, YOSHIFUJI Hideaki made the nd_net member inaccessible. commit c346dca10840a874240c78efe3f39acf4312a1f2 The three states are, nons - before namespaces nd_net - namespaces with direct access to nd_net member dev_net - access via dev_net NEW ---- In 2.6.31, nd_net is visible again, so we need to look for and use dev_net when it's present instead of checking for nd_net first.