RTNETLINK answers: File exists error when restarting the network service

Issue

• Failed to restart the network service and while checking the status of network service, following errors are noticed:

 systemctl status network.service

â network.service - LSB: Bring up/down networking
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/rc.d/init.d/network)
   Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Wed 2016-07-20 10:07:13 CDT; 22h ago
     Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
  Process: 9369 ExecStart=/etc/rc.d/init.d/network start (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)

Jul 20 10:07:13 hostname network[9369]: RTNETLINK answers: File exists
Jul 20 10:07:13 hostname network[9369]: RTNETLINK answers: File exists
Jul 20 10:07:13 hostname network[9369]: RTNETLINK answers: File exists
Jul 20 10:07:13 hostname network[9369]: RTNETLINK answers: File exists
Jul 20 10:07:13 hostname network[9369]: RTNETLINK answers: File exists
Jul 20 10:07:13 hostname network[9369]: RTNETLINK answers: File exists
Jul 20 10:07:13 hostname systemd[1]: network.service: control process exi...=1
Jul 20 10:07:13 hostname systemd[1]: Failed to start LSB: Bring up/down n...g.
Jul 20 10:07:13 hostname systemd[1]: Unit network.service entered failed ...e.
Jul 20 10:07:13 hostname systemd[1]: network.service failed.
Hint: Some lines were ellipsized, use -l to show in full.

• Why do we see RTNETLINK answers: File exists error while checking the status of network.service