As diagnosed by John Sperbeck :
This patch implies all ->bind() method took care of populating net->dev_addr ?
Otherwise the following existing heuristic is no longer working
// heuristic: "usb%d" for links we know are two-host,
// else "eth%d" when there's reasonable doubt. userspace
// can rename the link if it knows better.
if ((dev->driver_info->flags & FLAG_ETHER) != 0 &&
((dev->driver_info->flags & FLAG_POINTTOPOINT) == 0 ||
(net->dev_addr [0] & 0x02) == 0))
strscpy(net->name, "eth%d", sizeof(net->name));