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My laptop has connected to a number of Thunderbolt and USB-C docks over the last few years. While I never really paid attention to it before, I've noticed that I have a large number of "other network devices" in my System Settings Network applet:

Multiple LAN listings

My question is whether or not it is safe to delete any/all of these when I'm connected to WiFi to clean up a bit, and presume that they'll be added back as I use various docks again?

The background is that I am currently trying to debug a wired network issue and I want to narrow things down a bit. I'm guessing that there is a unique listing for each unique dock I've ever connected to and that's why there are so many. If so, presumably if I delete them and connect to a "new" one next time, it'll add a new record for that. I just want to be careful that this isn't something special to my network administrator from VPN, office LAN, firewalls, etc. and its just an individual record for each unique MAC the laptop has associated itself with over time.

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    Yes, you can delete all of the. If you reattach a device, it will be recreated.
    – Allan
    Commented Apr 21, 2023 at 12:39

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As per the comment and its 3 upvotes on the question, yes, it is safe to remove the extra entries. I tried this and verified that it did work.

There is one potential downside, however, in that if you have previously "Set Network Service Order" for the interfaces, the re-added interface will end up at the bottom of the list. In my case, I like to have LAN interfaces have a higher priority than Wi-Fi (i.e. prefer to use wired than wireless), so I had to go back and re-set the priorities to have LANs appear before Wi-Fi.

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