[uml-devel] [RFC PATCH] vde network backend

[Luca B. <sha...@ar...>]

Hi,
I've written a new network backend for user-mode-linux using libvdeplug to
connect to a vde_switch. In the following lines I've made a little
description of what VDE is and I've written a couple of examples to give
you an idea of the benefits you can have using this backend.

Please tell me what do you think about vde-transport and its first
implementation I'm attaching in this mail (It's a patch developed on
2.6.22.1 vanilla).

Transport syntax:
ethN=vde,<vde_switch>,<mac addr>,<port>,<group>,<mode>,<description>

Simplest example (attach to default switch on first port available):
eth0=vde

Virtual Distributed Ethernet is a virtual network that can be spawned over
a set of physical computer over the Internet and that can be shared
between physical hosts and various kinds of virtual machines.
vde_switch, core app of VDE framework, is an evolution of uml_switch. The
project was originally written by Renzo Davoli and now is maintained and
developed by Virtualsquare Team (which I'm part of).
For more information and simple examples of vde usage visit:
http://wiki.virtualsquare.org/index.php/VDE and
http://wiki.virtualsquare.org/index.php/VDE_Basic_Networking

Right now you can already connect to vde_switch with user-mode-linux in a
dirty way using daemon backend ( eth0=daemon,,,/tmp/switch1/ctl ), but
with vde network backend you can take advantage of greater flexibility and
transparency provided by libvdeplug.
For example you can connect to a specific switch port that can be already
configured with 802.1Q, you can provide a description for uml instance
to be able to better distinguish the port in complex configurations and
you can specify data socket permissions.

Regards,

Luca

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