On Thu, 29 Dec 2011 09:42:14 -0800
Stephen Hemminger [off-list ref] wrote:

I updated the latest iproute2 in git to include support for L2TP.
It is based on James's code but instead of using libnl, it uses netlink
directly (like I asked when rejecting the original patch).

In order to make netlink code in iproute2 cleaner, several libnetlink
have been updated.
  * unused junk argument to rtnl_dump_filter and rtnl_talk have
    been removed.
  * addattr_xx functions for building attributes added.
  * rta_getattr_XXX inline functions for the common case of
    looking at basic type attributes

This will show up in 3.2 version of iproute2 which is ready and
waiting for kernel release.

The addition of l2tp broke the common syntax of 'ip l' since it would
match ip l2tp rather than ip link.

Just added the following patch:

commit 5aa08f6bf4107f8aec43c0678466a314dbd0d054
Author: Stephen Hemminger [off-list ref]
Date:   Fri Jan 20 08:16:02 2012 -0800

    ip: make 'ip l' be 'ip link'
    
    Restore compatiablity for those lazy typists.

diff --git a/ip/ip.c b/ip/ip.c
index 7b4bacb..20dc3b5 100644
--- a/ip/ip.c
+++ b/ip/ip.c

@@ -72,8 +72,8 @@ static const struct cmd {
 	{ "neighbour",	do_ipneigh },
 	{ "ntable",	do_ipntable },
 	{ "ntbl",	do_ipntable },
-	{ "l2tp",	do_ipl2tp },
 	{ "link",	do_iplink },
+	{ "l2tp",	do_ipl2tp },
 	{ "tunnel",	do_iptunnel },
 	{ "tunl",	do_iptunnel },
 	{ "tuntap",	do_iptuntap },